A  = 

**    ~                   CO 

0      ~                     CD 

6  

< 

4 

NORTH  AND  SOUTH  AMEEICA. 

A 

DISCOURSE 

DELIVERED   BEFORE  THE 

RHOD'E-ISLAND  historical  society, 

DECEMBER    27,    18  6  5. 

BY     HIS     EXCELLENCY. 

DOMINGO  FAUSTINO  SARMIENTO, 

ARGENTINE  MINISTER  TO  THE  UNITED   STATES. 

PROVIDENCE  : 

KNOWLE8,     ANTHONY     &     CO.,     PRINTERS. 

186  6. 

of  California 
Regional 
Facility 


Universily    ol    California,    Los    Angeles 


The 


Fritz  L.  Hoffmann  Collection 


A  Gift  ol 

Olga  Mingo  Hoffmann 

1994 


NOETH  AND  SOUTH  AMERICA. 


DISCOURSE 

DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE 

RHODE-ISLAND   HISTORICAL   SOCIETY, 

DECEMBER    27,    1865. 


BY     HIS     EXCELLENCY, 

DOMINGO  FAUSTINO  SARMIENTO, 

ARGENTINE  MINISTER  TO  THE  UNITED   STATES. 


PROVIDENCE  : 
KNOWLES,    ANTHONY     &     CO.,     PRINTERS. 

1  8  G  6  . 


afttf 
URL 


Oc/i 


INTRODUCTORY   ADDRESS 


His  Excellency  DOMINGO  FAUSTINO  SARMIENTO 


HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  OF  EHODE  ISLAND, 


DELIVERED  DECEMBER  27th,  1865. 


Mr.  President  : 

Some  years  ago,  Col.  Mitre  and  I  received,  through  my 
friend  Mr.  Edward  A.  Hopkins,  the  diplomas  of  honorary 
members  of  this  society.  It  was  my  duty  on  coming  to  the 
United  States,  to  occupy  the  seat  you  have  offered  me  here,  if 
for  no  other  reason,  at  least  to  express  my  gratitude.  My 
honorable  friend,  your  Vice-President  Arnold,  has  been  kind 
enough  to  procure  me  the  opportunity  of  thus  doing,  by  arrang- 
ing this  special  meeting.  Many  years  have  now  accumulated 
over  my  head  ;  and  I  have  travelled  some  thousands  of  leagues 
during  a  life  of  almost  constant  movement,  and  of  too  much 
attrition  with  men  of  diverse  societies,  to  yield  to  the  temptation 
of  believing  that  I  have  any  title  to  distinction. 

Our  colleague,  Don  Bartolome  Mitre,  is  now  a  General  and 
President  of  the  Argentine  Republic.  His  Majesty  the  Empe- 
ror of  Brazil  considers  him  a  worthy  ally,  and  perhaps  at  this 
moment  the  same  field  tent  covers  their  heads.  I  recall  this 
fact  to  justify  your  election,  although  this  General  Mitre  is  also 
a  historian,  a  poet  and  a  publicist,  the  only  titles  of  value  in  this 
ssembly. 


I  will  not  carry  the  affectation  of  modestv  so  far  as  to  insin- 
uate that  I  have  no  claim  to  a  similar  consideration  ;  for  some 
of  your  book  shelves  contain  traces,  if  not  profound,  certainly 
numerous  enough,  that  I  also  have  gleaned  in  the  field  of  let- 
ters, and  turned  over  at  least,  those  materials  of  which  history 
is  formed.  Within  a  few  days  I  have  added  thereto  the  "Life 
of  Lincoln"  in  Spanish,  as  a  proof  that  I  would  add  my  grain 
of  sand  to  the  examination  and  generalization  of  those  facts 
which  most  nearly  interest  you,  because  they  interest  us  also. 
But  I  do  not  admit  that  our  election  to  your  society  was  caused 
by  a  previous  knowledge  of  our  historical  labors.  The  ocean 
is  a  bad  conductor  of  South  American  thought,  which  cannot 
presume  to  ask,  like  a  cacicpue  of  the  king  of  Bambarra  in 
Africa,  what  the  queen  of  England,  who  probably  was  ignorant 
of  his  existence,  said  of  him.  But  a  few  years  since,  even  a 
grand  historian  of  England,  notwithstanding  the  community  of 
language,  asked  with  disdain,  "  who  reads  an  American  book?" 

But  even  as  there  can  be  no  effect  without  a  cause,  it  also 
happens  that  extremes  meet,  and  contrasts  establish  affinities: 
and  it  may  be  that  between  the  Rio  de  la  Plata  and  Narraganset 
Bay;  between  Buenos  A  vies  and  Providence;  between  the 
northern  and  southern  extremes  of  America,  those  currents  and 
mysterious  attractions  exist,  which  science  is  wont  to  meet  with 
between  different  substances.  Perhaps  it  may  thus  be  explained 
how  a  South  American  is  found  seated  among  the  members  of 
an  historical  society  of  one  of  those  states  which  compose  the 
Pleiades  of  New-England; — Danaides  whose  vase  is  not  bot- 
tomless, like  that  of  the  ancient  ones,  judging  from  the  won- 
derful wealth  which  their  industry  and  economy  have  accum- 
ulated. 

I  had  hardly  visited  your  picturesque  city  when  I  met  Mr. 
George  E.  Church,  whom  I  knew  as  a  civil  engineer  in  Buenos 
Ayres,  where  he  was  commissioned  by  the  government  to 
inspect  our  frontiers  ;  and  wrote  an  important  report  indicating 
a  simple  plan  of  defense  against  the  savages,  based  upon  the 
study  of  our  geography.  Here,  1  find  him  a  Colonel  of  Rhode 
Island  soldier.*,  who  wen  1  forth  at  the  call  of  liberty  in  dan 
as  lie  lias  seen  us  in  our  country  with  sword  buckled  on  for  the 


same  cause.  Perhaps  Mr.  Church  remembers  with  sympathy, 
that  people  to  whom  he  lent  his  intelligence,  as  also,  the  names 
of  those  who  knew  how  to  appreciate  his  talent. 

A  little  later  I  learnt  that  Mr.  William  Wheelwright,  the 
contractor  of  railways  which  are  carrying  to  the  Pampas  the 
civilizing  snort  of  the  locomotive,  where  formerly  the  neighing 
of  horses  alone  was  heard,  is  a  native  of  Newburyport.  Then 
the  connection  between  your  republic  and  ours  became  more 
sensible,  because  the  progressive  genius  of  this  son  of  New- 
England,  has  made  the  two  countries  of  Chili  and  the  Argen- 
tine Republic,  his  own  field. 

The  company  was  formed  in  Rhode-Island  which  first 
attempted  to  introduce  American  industry  into  sequestered 
Paraguay,  where  it  met  the  result  which  was  to  be  feared  from 
the  jealousy  and  suspicion  of  those  gloomy  governors,  who, 
from  Dr.  Francia  to  the  last  Lopez,  inclusive,  have  with- 
drawn it  from  contact  with  the  exterior  world.  A  government 
which  expelled  dentists  because  the  Paraguayans  did  not 
require  their  services,  (so  says  the  official  decree,)  with  much 
more  reason  would  destroy  a  growing  industry  in  order  to 
monopolize  every  fountain  of  wealth.  But  even  this  unfortun- 
ate result  established  relations  between  Rhode-Island  and  the 
Rio  de  la  Plata.  I  witnessed  from  the  smiling  shores  of  the 
Tigre,  in  the  Parana,  the  launch  of  the  first  little  steamer  which 
navigated  its  waters,  the  property  of  this  company;  and  those 
who  remember  that  they  sent  out  her  engine,  belong  to  Rhode- 
Island. 

It  fell  to  me  as  a  member  of  the  Senate  of  Buenos  Ayres,  to 
grant  the  charter  for  the  Northern  Railway  ;  and  he  who  planned, 
organized  and  carried  it  out,  was  then  the  representative  of 
his  Rhode -Island  friends,  to  communicate  life  and  movement 
to  those  countx'ies.  Now,  Mr.  Hopkins,  whom  I  have  already 
mentioned,  is  engaged  under  another  grant  of  the  Argentine 
government,  in  an  enterprize  to  canalize  the  Capitan  stream,  a 
small  outlet  of  the  gigantic  Parana,  thus  to  accelerate  and 
render  more  secure  our  fluvial  navigation,  and  accumulate  on 
wharves  and  in  warehouses,  situated  at  the  inner  terminus  of 
his  railway — the  only  spot  on  the  coast  of  Buenos  Ayres  pro- 


tected   from  all   gales — the   wealth  which  descends  from   the 
torrid  zone. 

Nor  long  ago,  when  on  board  of  the  steamer  which  conveyed 
me  hence  to  New-York,  I  met  with  the  young  mariner  Captain 
T.  II.  King,  who  told  me  that  he  would  soon  sail  for  the  Rio 
de  la  Plata,  in  a  strainer  owned  in  Rhode-Island,  to  build  there 
a  marine  railway  for  the  repair  of  vessels  of  all  sorts,  like  those 
he  had  constructed  already  in  Shangai,  in  China,  with  Rhode- 
Island  capital.  I  therefore  believe  it  is  possible  that  the  coun- 
try where  the  engineers,  the  steamers,  the  machines,  and  the 
capital  of  Rhode-Island,  are  the  American  pioneers,  may  have 
made  known,  for  some  time  back,  the  names  of  those  Argentine 
public  men  who  have  given  the  most  sympathetic  reception  to 
this  initiative,  and  among  these  names — I  am  proud  to  say  it — 
figures  my  own. 

Other  bonds  between  these  two  countries  I  met  with  here, 
which  I  ought  not  to  pass  by.  The  attentive  hospitality  of  our 
Vice-President,  the  Hon.  Samuel  Greene  Arnold,  permitted 
me  to  look  over  numerous  Argentine  documents  in  his  library  ; 
among  them  almost  forgotten  writings  of  mv  own.  And  in  our 
familiar  conversation  I  discovered  that  he  has  traveled  South 
America  from  one  extremity  to  the  other,  visited  the  Argentine 
Republic,  broken  bread  with  the  famous  tyrant  Rosas,  and 
frequented  the  society  of  dear  friends  of  mine.  In  a  book  of 
his  notes,  I  saw  mention  made  of  the  principal  incidents  of  his 
travels,  together  with  the  names  and  description  of  places,  and 
the  aspect  of  society,  the  government,  and  contemporaneous 
events. 

But  what  was  my  surprise  on  visiting  the  library  of  Mr. 
John  Carter  Brown,  the  distinguished  lover  of  books,  to  meet 
in  Providence  with  the  most  complete,  abundant,  and  instruct- 
ive collection  of  Spanish  authors,  above  all,  those  who  have 
written  upon  South  America,  from  the  first  days  of  the  conquest 
to  our  epoch.  After  admiring  so  rich  a  treasure  I  could  com- 
prehend the  praise  of  the  talented  English  historian,  Helps, 
author  of  an  excellent  history  of  the  Spanish  conquest,  where 
he  declares,  that  he  procured  from  this  library  in  Rhode-Island, 
document*  upon    Spanish    A.merica,    which   the   library   of  the 


British  museum  could  not  furnish  him.  But  I  do  not  compre- 
hend, unless  we  appeal  to  those  mysterious  sympathies  of  which 
I  spoke  at  the  commencement,  how  it  is  that  this  treasure, 
which  South  America  would  envy,  is  found  in  Providence.  If, 
for  example,  it  was  desired  to  write  about  the  present  war 
between  the  Argentine  and  Uraguayan  Republic  and  Brazil 
as  allies,  against  Paraguay,  it  would  be  necessary  to  come  to 
Rhode-Island  to  find  in  the  rich  collection  of  books  upon  the 
Jesuit  missionaries,  and  the  wars  between  Spaniards  and  Por- 
tuguese on  questions  of  frontiers,  the  geographical  description 
of  each  portion  of  those  countries,  as  well  as  the  causes  of  sub- 
sequent tyrannies,  and  of  the  present  war,  flowing  from  the 
theocratic  governments  of  the  Guarani  Missions. 

In  reference  to  my  own  country,  but  little  good — save  the 
hospitable  reception  he  met  with — was  the  traveller  Arnold 
able  to  tell  you.  He  visited  it  in  1848,  during  the  darkest 
period  of  its  history,  when  two  decades  of  an  ignorant,  cruel 
and  barbarous  despotism  had  already  run  their  course,  of  which 
we  should  have  had  no  example  in  history,  if  Philip  II.  during 
the  term  of  only  one  reign  had  not  annihilated  a  nation  for  three 
long  centuries — perhaps  forever. 

Mr.  Arnold  will  remember  that  upon  the  front  of  all  the 
public  edifices  of  Buenos  Ayres,  and  upon  a  red  badge  which 
every  citizen  bore  upon  his  bosom,  he  could  read  mueran  los 
salvajes,  asquerosos  inmundos  Urtitarlos  (death  to  the  filthy, 
obscene  Unitarians,)  emblem  imposed  by  the  tyrant  upon  a 
subjugated  people,  through  twenty  years  of  assassinations.  A 
brutal  soldiery  strutted  about,  in  the  midst  of  a  civilized  society, 
in  the  red  chiripa*  of  the  savage  indian,  as  their  only  uniform. 
In  the  place  of  roads,  canals  of  mud  led  to  the  city,  in  which 
carts  of  primitive  form  drawn  by  half-tamed  oxen,  often  re- 
mained buried  forever.  The  streets,  scarcely  lit  with  tallow 
candles,  were  pools  of  stagnant  water,  with  holes  and  breaks 
in  the  narrow  sidewalks. 

I  will  not  extend  this  picture  of  a  fossil  world,  but  will  ex- 


*Waist  cloth  descending  below  the  knee,  used  instead  of  pantaloons. 


8 

puncre  it  by  substituting  the  most  important  lineaments  of  the 
present  scene,  together  with  some  mention  of  the  principal 
South  American  cities  Mr.  Arnold  visited,  to  show  him,  that 
whilst  passing  rears  whitened  our  heads  as  individuals,  there, 
as  here,  society  extended  its  branches,  and  like  the  fruit  trees, 
loaded  them  with  golden  harvests.  Let  us  begin  on  the  coast 
of  the  Pacific.  Not  far  from  the  port  ofCopiapo  in  Chili, 
where  the  English  steamers  touched  in  1848,  the  port  and  city 
ofCaldera  was  founded  in  1852.  From  its  wharf  the  railway 
start-  which,  sealing  the  Cordilleras  of  the  Andes,  brings  down 
from  the  Chanarsilla  and  Ises  Puntas,  the  silver  ore  which 
increases  the  commerce  of  the  world.  One  day's  sail  to  the 
south  will  bring  him  to  the  port  of  Coquimbo,  and  another 
railway,  to  Serena.  On  the  announcement  of  the  blockade  of 
these  two  ports  undertaken  by  the  Spaniards,  copper  doubled 
in  price  in  England. 

Another  day's  sail  again  to  the  south  brings  us  to  Valparaiso, 
in  its  commerce  a  European  city,  but  American  in  its  activity, 
its  citv  railways,  and  its  railroad  to  Santiago.  This  is  a  work 
of  American  genius,  located  by  the  distinguished  engineer 
Allan  Campbell,  of  New- York,  who  found  pleasure  in  playing 
with  the  difficulties  invincible  to  others,  of  scaling  the  western 
chain  of  mountains  parallel  to  the  central  Andes.  Santiago, 
which  Mr.  Arnold  knew  with  all  the  features  of  a  colonial  city, 
ie  to-day  called  the  city  of  palaces,  and  among  them  even  the 
Moorish  Alhambra  has  been  copied  in  miniature. 

Crossing  the  solemn  Andes,  a  doleful  scene  would  surprise 
Mr.  Arnold,  on  his  second  voyage.  The  city  of  Mendoza,  of 
which  he  retains  such  agreeable  reminiscences,  ceased  to  exist 
a  few  years  ago.  It  died  a  violent  death,  swept  away  to  its 
foundation  by  the  most  horrible  earthquake.  I  recommend 
him  to  preserve  the  remembrance  of  the  city,  as  he  saw  it, 
because  this  image  is  the  only  monument  which  remains  of  its 
appearance. 

Leaving  the  province  of  San  Juan,  my  birth-place,  distant  to 
the  North  forty  leagues,  from  Mendoza,  with  its  city  somewhat 
embellished  by  its  "  School  Sarmiento,"  the  largest  and  most 
monumental    of  all    South    America:    with    it.-    silver    mines, 


9 

worked  by  English  capital,  the  very  existence  of  which  was 
unknown  in  1848 ;  let  us  follow  the  road  which,  by  Sauce's 
stage  coaches,  conducts  us,  in  eight  days,  to  the  shores  of  the 
Parana  River.  Over  the  Desaguadero  there  is  now  a  fine 
bridge,  which  then  was  wanting.  The  Pampa  thence  to  the 
Rio  Quarto  has  not  sensibly  changed  its  aspect,  and  I  leave  its 
description  to  Mr.  Arnold ;  but  from  thence  onward,  he  would 
meet  with  the  Civil  Engineer,  Mr.  Henry  Blyth,  his  compat- 
riot, who,  from  the  track  of  the  Railway  to  Cordoba,  which  he 
is  laying  at  the  rate  of  one  mile  per  week,  will  show  him  the 
tent  of  Mr.  Wheelwright,  from  whence,  with  map  and  com- 
pass, he  is  tracing  the  prolongation  of  another  one  hundred 
leagues  of  railroad,  even  to  the  torrid  Tucuman  ;  that  he  may 
shadow  himself  beneath  the  matted  branches  of  its  orange  for- 
ests,  its  jasmines,  its  cedars  and  Paradise  trees.  But  now  we 
have  arrived  at  Rosario,  which,  in  the  diary  of  Mr.  Arnold, 
only  seventeen  years  ago,  figures  as  an  obscure  little  village  of 
ranchos  and  huts.  But  Rosario  is  now  a  port  and  most  beauti- 
ful city,  the  starting  point  of  the  Argentine  Central  Railroad, 
and  the  emporium  of  the  products  of  all  the  Provinces,  and  it 
possesses  journals  in  Spanish  and  English,  as  well  as  all  other 
signs  of  commercial  activity. 

In  place  of  buying  a  coach  to  cross  the  Pampa  to  Buenos 
Ayres,  a  steamboat  awaits  him  at  Hopkins'  Wharf,  and,  de- 
scending the  tranquil  waters  of  the  Parana,  between  leagues 
long  of  peach  trees,  he  would  arrive  at  San  Fernando,  almost 
brushing  by  the  Islands  he  left  as  wild  habitations  of  the  tiger ; 
but,  to-day,  covered  with  delightful  gardens,  forming,  with 
their  numerous  canals,  a  rural  Holland,  productive  of  vegeta- 
bles, delicious  fruits  and  trees  for  fuel. 

The  railroad,  designed  by  his  friend  Hopkins,  would  carry 
him  from  San  Fernando  to  Belgrano,  a  city  born  between  night 
and  morning,  thence  through  Palermo  de  San  Benito,  the  for- 
mer residence  of  the  b  rbarous  tyrant  Rosas,  now  converted 
into  a  school  of  arts  and  sciences,  to  Buenos  Ayres,  a  city  of 
at  least  150,000  inhabitants.  This  city  increases  at  the  rate  of 
one  thousand  houses  per  annum,  and  its  gas  illuminated  streets 
contain  the  sumptuous  Hotels  de  la  Paz,  the  Club  of  Progress, 
2 


10 

of  the  Plata,  the  Capitol,  the  Exchange,  the  Colon  Theatre, 
the  cupolas  of  ten  new  Temples,  five  of  them  Protestant,  and 
an  active  people,  half  European,  promenading  streets  well 
paved  in  front  of  stores  and  shops  of  all  kinds,  which  expose 
for  sale  the  industrial  riches  of  the  whole  world. 

Should  he  wish  to  visit  the  country  districts,  the  railroads  to 
Ensenada,  the  Southern,  the  Western  or  the  Northern,  are 
ready  for  his  service  at  all  hours.  '  San  Jose  de  Flores,  whose 
beautiful  temple  Mr.  Arnold  remembers,  is  already  a  suburb 
of  Buenos  Ayres,  and  shortly,  it  will  be  a  ward  and  parish  of 
the  great  city.  The  school  house  of  this  town  is  more  sump- 
tuous even  than  the  church.  Seeing  that,  in  this  direction,  we 
are  on  the  road  to  Lujan,  I  will  tell  him  that  what  was  then  a 
simple  guard-post  is  now  the  noble  city  of  Mercedes,  surroun- 
ded by  beautiful  plantations,  whose  Club-House,  opened  when 
the  Western  Railway  arrived  at  its  doors,  cost  100,000  dollars. 
Farther  on  in  the  pampa,  where  the  savages  yet  made  their 
incursions  in  1848,  the  district  of  Chivilcoy  is  found,  with  its 
forty  square  leagues  of  wheat  fields,  divided  by  streets  into  lots 
of  two  leagues  each;  and  in  the  centre  of  this  agricultural 
region,  peopled  by  emigrants  and  cultivated  by  American 
ploughs  and  other  implements,  the  beautiful  village  of  ChiVil- 
coy  rears  its  ostentatious  edifices,  fronting  avenues  like  those 
of  New  York  ;  with  its  park  like  that  of  New  Haven  ;  with  its 
schools  like  those  of  Providence  ;  and,  as  the  Rev.  Erastus 
Otis  Haven  said,  in  his  lecture  upon  "the  adornment  of  the 
school  houses,  as  a  desideratum  among  the  indirect  benefits  of 
Kducation,  so  as  to  form  a  national  taste  by  the  production  of 
the  fine  arts,"  Chivilcoy  is  the  only  town  of  the  world,  which, 
to  the  glorification  of  its  common  schools,  has  charged  a  sculp- 
tor To  chisel  a  group  for  it.  And  that  group  represents  the 
Bublime  scene  from  the  Evangelists,  where  the  Saviour  says  to 
his  Apostles,  while  blessing  some  children:  "  Suffer  little  chil- 
dren, and  forbid  them  not,  to  come  unto  me." 

Tin-,  my  Colleagues,  is  the  Buenos  Ayres  which  we,  of  the 
liberal  Constitutional  Union  Party  of  the  Argentine  Republic, 
have  made  in  ten  years,  alter  having,  in  twenty  years  of  hard 
battling,  torn  out  the  indigenous  plant  of  the  tyranny  of  Rosas. 


11 

A  part  of  this,  the  genius,  the  capital,  and  the  progressive 
spirit  of  Rhode  Island  have  done,  and  all  of  you  ought  to  con- 
gratulate yourselves  for  it. 

If  you  remark  that  I  note  in  each  country  village,  or  in  the 
Capital,  or  in  some  of  the  Provinces,  the  existence  of  fine 
school  houses,  I  beg  my  friend,  Mr.  Arnold,  to  remember,  that 
it  is  hardly  three  weeks  since  I  asked  him  to  accompany  me  to 
the  Northern  Cemetery  of  Providence,  and  there,  after  wander- 
ing about  its  shady  streets  and  roads,  ascending  its  elevations, 
or  going  down  to  the  little  valleys,  which  so  vary  this  smiling 
mansion  of  the  dead,  on  perceiving  two  funeral  columns,  "  it  is 
the  second,"  I  said,  and  dismounting  from  the  carriage,  we  reli- 
giously drew  near  to  the  tomb  of  Horace  Mann.  I  had  recog- 
nized its  obelisk,  because  I  knew  it  was  copied  from  that  of  the 
Vatican,  the  form  of  which  I  remembered.  This  is  yet  another 
bond  between  Rhode  Island  and  my  country.  Those  schools 
which  beautify  the  pampa  of  Buenos  Ayres,  are  the  effect  of 
the  inspiration  of  that  guest  of  the  Northern  Cemetery,  wh  o 
reposes  by  the  side  of  your  parents  and  children.  "  The  school 
building  is  the  school  itself,  almost  the  whole  school."  This 
was  the  axiom  which  I  learnt  from  the  experience  of  Horace 
Mann,  during  our  colloquies  at  West  Point,  in  1847  ;  for  it  is 
proper  you  should  know  that  at  the  very  time  Mr.  Arnold  was 
visitino-  my  country,  by  his  capital  and  his  friends,  at  some 
future  day,  to  communicate  to  it  a  spirit  of  progress,  I  was 
visiting  the  land  of  his  birth,  to  carry  away  from  it  a  little  of 
that  sacred  fire  which  gives  life  to  the  flame  of  liberty — the 
universal  education  of  the  people.  I  have,  therefore,  one  friend 
more  in  Rhode  Island, — Horace  Mann  ;  one  bond  besides  the 
Historical  Society, — the  Common  Schools. 

I  will  not  stop  to  mention  our  interior  lines  of  steamers,  save 
to  say  that  at  the  request  of  my  friend  Hopkins,  the  Argentine 
Congress  passed  a  law,  last  August,  subsidizing  with  $20,000 
per  annum  the  United  States  and  Brazil  line,  so  soon  as  it  will 
extend  beyond  Rio  de  Janeiro  to  the  port  of  Buenos  Ayres. 
This  bill  passed  in  the  lower  house  unanimously,  and  is  justly 
considered  as  an  invitation  which  your  Congress  will  hardly 
ne fleet.     Nor  will  I  mention  our  newspapers  and  reviews  and 


12 

other  evidences  of  our  advancement,  since  the  dark  day  of 
tyranny — which  yet  stains  our  national  reputation  abroad — 
passed  away  from  us  forever.  Your  mariners  can  recount  you 
all  this  and  much  more.  But  I  can  tell  you  that  if  some  day  our 
ports  should  be  blockaded,  as  Spain  is  now  doing  with  those  of 
Chili,  you  may  be  prepared  to  close  half  your  cloth  manufac- 
tories, because  the  increase  of  wool  in  the  Argentine  Republic 
during  only  the  last  ten  years,  is  but  little  less  than  the  pro- 
duction of  Australia.  In  four  years  more  it  will  exceed  that 
and  the  product  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  united  ;  and  at  the 
rate  of  our  increase,  in  ten  more,  as  when  the  United  States 
ceased  to  provide  cotton,  the  world  will  tremble  with  cold 
during  winter,  if  our  sheep  pelts  should  be  wanting.  This  is 
to  show  to  political  Eip  Van  Winkles,  that  they  have  a  great 
and  personal  interest  in  permitting  the  full  development  of 
America  ;  because  every  government  ought  to  feel  to-day  what 
the  freedman  Terence  felt  some  two  thousand  years  agone. 
"  Homo  su?n  et  nihil  Kumanum  a  me  alienum  puto." — Nothing 
human  is  indifferent  to  the  modern  world. 

This  causes  me  to  look  up  from  the  facts  I  have  partially 
related,  to  the  principle  which  ought  to  govern  them.  I  said 
before,  that  there  are  no  effects  without  causes.  Why  is 
Rhode-Island  present  in  the  Rio  de  la  Plata?  Why  am  I  here? 
I  ask  for  all  your  favor,  for  Ave  ought  to  leave  the  field  of  geo- 
graphy and  material  progress,  to  ascend  the  higher  regions  of 
philosophy  and  history,  which  it  is  the  object  of  our  society  to 
study  :  and  although  we  have  been  detained  by  considering 
whence  the  influence  of  North  America  upon  South  America 
has  emanated,  I  would  desire,  on  meeting  with  you  for  the  first 
time — and  counting  upon  your  indulgence — to  show  how  I 
explain  these  influences,  how  they  must  work  harmoniously 
in  a  greater  decree,  and  also  what  is  the  best  channel  in  which 
they  should  be  directed. 


13 


II. 


Except  Rome,  which,  from  its  foundation  upon  the  seven 
hills,  was  conscious  of  its  future  destiny,  the  peoples  predes- 
tined to  influence  the  institutions  and  the  march  of  the  human 
race  have  not  understood  themselves  in  their  first  manifesta- 
tions. For  them,  as  for  the  individual,  the  nosce  seipsum  of 
the  ancient  sage  has  been  slow  and  difficult.  A  foreign  eye 
sometimes  succeeds  in  comprehending  them  better,  and  in  this 
view  Anacharsis  is  not  wholly  an  invention  of  Barthelemy. 
The  aesthetic  observer,  without  the  aid  of  any  artificial  lens, 
exercises  his  vision  over  the  whole,  independent  of  the  move- 
ments of  the  object  observed.  Thus,  the  first  page  of  Greek 
civilization  in  its  native  purity  comes  before  his  eye  ;  and  thus 
I  am  excused  for  venturing  a  few  remarks. 

So  long  a  time  transpires  before  enterprising  nations  feel 
themselves  to  be  artificers  of  the  work  which  others  see  them 
executing  from  the  beginning,  because  those  permanent  asso- 
ciations which  connect  us  with  the  past,  instinctively  direct 
our  looks  behind  us  instead  of  along  the  route  marked  out  for 
us  to  follow.  The  chosen  people  of  God  every  moment  fall 
into  that  idolatry  which  it  was  their  mission  to  dissipate  in  the 
future  :  the  Greeks  assemble  to  avenge  upon  Asiatic  Troy  the 
injuries  done  to  their  ancestors ;  and  centuries  later  Alexander 
with  all  the  Hellenic  civilization,  countermarches  to  the  east  to 
ruin  it,  and  to  die  himself,  instead  of  following  on  westward 
to  Latium  where  his  vanguard  was.  He  would  then  have 
surprised  the  sons  of  the  Etruscan  she-wolf  and  have  softened 
their  natures  with  the  arts  of  Phidias  and  the  science  of  Aristotle. 
If  it  had  not  been  for  this  ambitious  display  of  the  son  of  Philip, 
our  women  might  now  be  modeled  like  the  Venus  de  Medici  ; 
the  civilized  world  might  have  spoken  the  idiom  of  Demosthenes, 
and  the  barbarians  might  not,  for  twelve  centuries,  have  dis- 
turbed and  retarded  the  march  of  civilization,  paralyzed  the 
fine  arts,  and  delayed  the  triumph  of  the  democratic  republic. 

France  in  1790,  yielding  to  this  fatal  propensity  of  the  hu- 


14 

man  mind,  looked  back  into  history  to  seek  in  Greece  and 
Kome  the  liberty  and  the  republic  which  Lafayette  could  teach 
her,  and  which  he  carried  to  her  with  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence and  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  Truth,  which, 
always  rich  in  actual  facts,  and  the  only  caryatide  which  sus- 
tains the  entablature,  or  carries  authority  with  it,  appears  to 
lie  ignorant  of  its  own  force  or  the  light  with  which  it  illumi- 
nates others.  Will  the  United  States  escape  this  historic 
fatality? 

Let  us  look  at  the  Monroe  doctrine  with  which  the  atmos- 
phere seems  to  be  impregnated,  rather  like  a  dark  cloud  than 
u  bright  light.  Some  hope  to  see  rays  emitted  from  its  bosom  ; 
others  hope  to  see  it  resolved  into  a  fixed  and  resplendent 
aurora  borealis,  into  that  northern  light  which  Webster  pointed 
out,  destined  to  guide  the  magi  of  the  south  to  the  cradle  of 
American  liberty.  It  is  rather  a  cause  of  perturbation  to  the 
world. 

Yet  the  Monroe  doctrine  has  its  example  in  history,  and  its 
prepared  place  in  the  law  of  nations.  Christianity  has  its 
Monroe  doctrine,  accepted  by  Islam,  and  the  western  powers. 
France  has  for  centuries  exercised  the  moral  protectorate  of  the 
holy  sepulchre,  and  intervenes  with  the  consent-of  Europe  in 
favor  of  the  Christians  in  the  East,  on  condition  of  not  putting 
a  profane  hand  upon  the  sacred  deposit,  for  her  own  benefit. 

A  nation  like  the  United  States,  which,  in  less  than  a  cen- 
turv,  has  established  the  Republic  as  a  stable  form  of  govern- 
ment, upon  a  virgin  soil,  freed  geographically  and  politically 
from  the  roll  of  the  traditional  governments  of  the  rest  of  the 
world,  has  a  right  to  guard  the  environs  of  the  Holy  Cradle  of 
the  new  world,  and  to  protect  these  Christians  of  the  West, 
who,  also  freed  from  every  letter,  are  attempting  the  organiza- 
tion of  Republics.  South  America  assails  no  European  or 
dynastic  right  upon  her  soil,  but  there  is  European  aggression 
intent  upon  rccolonizing  it  with  a  principle  of  government 
which  its  first  settlers  did  not  import.  South  America  is  too 
low  down  in  the  human  current  for  any  one  to  be  able  to  pre- 
tend  thai  she  has  disturbed  the  waters  of  the  dynastic  govern- 
ment -. 


15 

The  Monroe  doctrine  was,  in  its  origin,  the  protest  of  Eng- 
land and  the  United  States  against  all  European  intervention 
which  might  have,  for  its  object,  as  the  Holy  Alliance  pro- 
posed, the  proscription  of  the  principles  of  free  government  in 
South  America,  even  as  they  had  been  proscribed  in  Europe 
since  1815. 

All  Europe  assented  to  it  by  recognizing  the  Independence 
of  these  Republics,  and  maintains  it  in  the  diplomatic  protesta- 
tions which  she  makes  before  or  after  hostile  acts,  that  she  has 
no  design  against  the  independence  of  any  of  their  States.  The 
Monroe  doctrine,  not  only  secured  the  Independence  of  the 
Colonies,  which  were  independent,  per  se,  but  also  the  right  to 
emancipate  themselves,  which  the  United  States  had  pro- 
claimed in  its  Declaration.  It  did  not  compromise  English 
Sovereignty,  because  it  came  into  the  world  in  agreement  with 
England,  and  by  the  initiation  of  Mr.  Canning. 

The  United  States,  on  pi*esenting  itself  on  the  scene  of  the 
modern  world,  put  on  trial  a  constitution  without  precedent  in 
the  history  of  governments  ;  and  the  very  men  who  launched 
this  ship,  constructed  upon  no  tried  models,  feared  every 
moment  to  see  it  dash  itself  to  pieces  upon  unknown  sands. 
The  ship  traversed  the  seas  impelled  by  propitious  airs ;  a 
prophecy  of  the  age  of  steam  applied  to  human  development. 
The  event  was  due  precisely  to  the  plan  of  the  structure,  which 
was  founded  on  the  simple  notion  of  justice.  But  the  subse- 
quent introduction  of  an  old  material,  heretofore  repudiated, 
which  is  the  conquest  and  absorption  of  peoples  and  territories 
by  arms,  was  to  turn  back  to  two  thousand  years  ago,  and 
utterly  to  renounce  the  initiation  of  the  new  reconstruction  of 
human  society.  It  was  rechanging  Americans  into  Europeans 
and  Asiatics,  as  General  Bonaparte  descended  from  the  height 
of  the  Egyptian  Pyramid,  where  the  future  contemplated  him, 
to  disguise  himself  in  the  polluted  and  discolored  purple,  of 
Marcus  Antonius,  which  the  simoom  of  revolution  brought 
rolling  at  his  feet. 

What  an  eclipse  of  history  by  clouds  of  dust. 

The  federal  system  is  the  most  admirable  combination  which 
chance  ever  suggested  to  the  genius  of  man. 


16 

Greece  would  have  saved  herself,  if  she  had  seen  it,  for  she 
held  it  before  her  eyes,  and  in  her  hands,  in  her  Achaean  and 
Amphictyonic  Leagues.  Rome  would  have  saved  herself,  if  she 
had  conceded  to  the  allied  Italiots,  the  equality  which  they 
claimed.  France  would  have  saved  herself,  if  in  republicaniz- 
ing  the  works  of  Louis  XI,  Richelieu,  Mazarin  and  Louis 
XIV,  she  had  not  effaced  from  .  the  map,  Guienne,  Brittany, 
Languedoc,  Artois,  Picardy,  &c,  and  cheated  and  ground 
them  to  powder,  as  departments,  making  their  territories  like 
a  checker-board,  in  order  to  deliver  them  to  the  Faubourg 
Saint  Antoine,  or  to  some  lucky  general  in  the  game  of  politcal 
chess.  But  it  is  dangerous  to  convert  the  Federal  System  into 
an -invading  republic,  swallowing  ever,  without  being  able  to 
digest.  The  experiment  has  never  succeeded.  Even  England 
saved  herself  only  when  she  prepared  her  colonies  to  emanci- 
pate themselves,  thus  giving  to  the  world  the  legacy  of  her 
five  institutions,  unfettered  by  her  own  domination,  and  crea- 
ting a  New  England,  without  imposing  upon  it  her  fatal  des- 
tiny. The  republic,  crowned  with  laurels  and  displaying 
trophies,  is  the  death  of  the  inebriated  inhaler  of  oxygen, 
which  fills  the  mind  with  glorious  illusions,  whilst  the  body 
dies  in  ineffable  convulsions  of  joy.  The  Monroe  doctrine  must 
be  purified  of  all  the  stains  with  which  the  hand  of  man  has 
dimmed  its  lustre. 

The  Republic  of  Chili  put  at  the  head  of  its  constitution 
this  declaration  :  "  Chili  is  the  country  comprised  between  the 
Andes  and  the  Pacific;  between  Cape  Horn  and  the  desert  of 
Atacama."  The  United  States  ought  to  say  that  it  is  the 
country  which  lies  between  the  two  oceans  and  two  treaties, 
and  the  day  after  it  has  said  so,  the  Monroe  doctrine  will  be 
accepted  by  the  international  law  of  Europe,  thus  removing  the 
greatest  source  of  present  peril. 


17 


III. 

The  government  of  society  is  like  the  rnorale  of  the  individ- 
ual;  of  divine  origin,  and  every  ray  of  light  which  is  emitted 
by  this  fire  will  illuminate  all  around  it  and  spread  over  the 
whole  earth  and  into  the  depths  of  futurity,  as  far  as  the  inten- 
sity and  brilliancy  will  permit.  Under  despotism  it  will  be 
the  moon  whose  faint  light  displays  the  dark  objects  on  its 
surface,  be  they  caused  by  slavery  or  ignorance.  But  it  will 
be  the  resplendent  sun  whenever  the  strong  currents  of  true 
liberty  shall  vivify  its  flame. 

Who  would  have  feared  that  the  United  States  was  only  to 
throw  shadows  round  about  it  ?  slavery  toward  the  south, 
conquest  on  the  west,  threats  to  the  north,  and  a  challenge  to 
the  world,  even  like  France,  which  at  one  time  sounded  the 
Marseillaise  on  the  balconies  of  all  Europe,  in  order  to  give  to 
it  a  new  and  still  greater  Louis  XIV. 

Fortunately,  the  American  Kepublic,  retracing  its  steps,  has 
undertaken  to  purify  its  wheat  from  the  tares  which  bad  prin- 
ciples had  introduced  from  the  old  world. 

It  is  not  for  us  to  point  out  the  path  which  the  modern  repub- 
lic must  take  if  she  will  not  be  misled  by  the  fatuous  fires  which 
have  ruined  so  many  others.  But  we  may  be  permitted  to  ex- 
amine the  language,  the  history  and  the  progress  of  South 
America,  in  its  connection  with  America  of  the  north,  and 
perhaps  we  can  point  out  half  effaced  traces,  and  some  that  are 
imperishable,  which  reveal  the  transit  of  the  pioneer  exploring 
the  country  and  opening  the  way  for  future  movements. 

The  United  States,  from  afar,  hurried  on  the  independence  of 
South  America.  The  Anglo- American  colonies  on  declarino- 
themselves  independent,  established  certain  truths  as  self-evi- 
dent, which  had  not  been  so  to  all  the  peoples  of  the  world,  until 
the  dawn  of  this  happy  experiment  in  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  but  which  were  proclaimed  in  the  name  of  hu- 
manity as  Lincoln  expounded  it  in  his  immortal  interpretation 
3 


18 

of  the  Declaration,  in  Independence  Hall.  Yet  there  are  others 
which  apply  to  peoples  placed  in  certain  circumstances  with 
relation  to  others.  "  When  in  the  course  of  human  events," 
it  says,  "  it  is  necesary  for  a  people  to  break  the  bonds  which 
have  bound  them  to  another."  <Sbc. 

This  was  the  proclamation  of  the  right  of  colonics  to  eman- 
cipate themselves  wheresoever  the  laws  of  nature  hold  sway, 
and  the  nature  of  God  is  comprehended  by  the  human  con- 
science. South  America  felt  itself  evoked  by  this  herald,  and 
in  San  Martin  and  in  Bolivar,  found  Washingtons  and  Lafay- 
ette's wlui  secure.^  by  the  sanction  of  victory,  the  independence 
which  its  Congress  declared  ;  and  like  the  North  Americans 
.-lie  took  her  scat  in  the  family  of  nations. 

Her  recognition  was  not  obtained  without  conquering  de- 
termined opposition.  When  the  new  republics  were  ushered 
into  existence.  Napoleon,  the  prodigal  son  of  the  republic,  had 
just  been  finally  conquered.  The  Bourbons  had  been  restored 
as  the  safe  representatives  of  the  divine  right  to  govern,  and 
the  holy  alliance  made  itself  a  political  inquisition  to  burn  all 
constitutions  which  invoked  the  will  of  the  people. 

England  and  the  United  States,  forgetting  past  dissentions, 
agreed  this  time  that  they  alone  were  left  in  the  world  to  pre- 
serve English  liberties  exposed  to  isolation  and  proscription  : 
the  one  dependent  upon  the  popular  origin  of  its  kings,  sus- 
taining the  principles  of  the  declaration  of  independence,  the 
other  asking  and  obtaining  justice  for  the  emancipated  colonies, 
declaring  them  their  equals.  The  Monroe  doctrine,  which  was 
I  ii. in  then,  had  a  more  elevated  origin  than  a  proper  name,  and 
like  the  metrical  decimal  systems,  it  is  founded  in  the  laws  of 
nature  and  in  the  nature  of  God,  and  is  in  so  far  not  French, 
but  human. 

What  the  cabinet  of  Washington  did  then  was  to  send  a 
diplomatic  mission  to  the  Bio  de  la  Plata  in  the  frigate  ( longress, 
in  order  to  examine  into  the  condition  and  probabilities  of  the 
war  of  the  colonies  against  Spain.  It  wished  to  survey  the 
land  in  order  to  proceed  to  the  recognition  according  to  the 
capacity  of  the  colonies  to  triumph  definitely. 

The  result  of  this  exploring  commission  was    published   in 


19 

1819,  in  Baltimore,  in  two  volumes,  and  was  reprinted  in  Lon- 
don in  1820,  and  dedicated  by  the  secretary  of  the  commission, 
Mr.  H.  M.  Breckinridge,  to  Sir  James  Macintosh,  as  to  one 
"  who  comprehended  fully  the  future  destinies  of  both  Americas, 
North  and  South,"  so  that  thus  the  two  cabinets  marched  in 
accord,  and  thus  the  two  continents  were  united  in  sympathy 
and  opinion. 

This  work,  by  its  official  character  and  origin,  and  by  the 
documents  which  accompanied  it,  diffused  much  interest  in 
favor  of  South  America,  both  in  England  and  in  the  United 
States.  Accompanying  the  work  of  the  secretary  was  the 
report  of  Mr.  Rodney,  chief  of  the  expedition,  dedicated  to  Mr. 
John  Quincy  Adams,  then  Secretary  of  State.  Mr.  Graham, 
another  of  the  commissioners,  gave  a  separate  report — a  com- 
plement to  that  of  Mr.  Rodney — which  went  to  confirm  both. 
The  work  terminates  with  a  letter  dedicated  to  James  Monroe, 
by  an  American  citizen,  pleading  warmly  for  the  independence  of 
the  Spanish  colonies,  and  thus  preparing  public  opinion  for  the 
recognition.  The  conclusion  to  which  this  writer  arrived,  after 
having  sustained  the  right  and  the  justice  of  the  colonies  to 
emancipate  themselves,  was  this  :  u  It  is  very  evident  that  ive 
must  be,  and  should  be  proud,  to  be,  the  first  to  acknowledge  the 
independence  of  South  America,  or  one  'part  of  it,  ivhenever  it 
be  achieved,  now  or  ten  years  hence.''  Mr.  Breckenridge's  book, 
the  official  reports  and  the  letter  to  Monroe,  breathe  the  same 
interest  for  the  cause  of  South  America  ;  the  same  approbation 
of  its  motives  ;  the  same  confidence  in  the  results.  Prominent 
in  them  is  a  profound  sympathy  for  the  people  who  inhabit  the 
margins  of  the  Rio  de  la  Plata,  explaining  their  situation,  and 
submitting  animated  notices  upon  their  resources,  commerce 
and  present  civilization,  and  hopes  of  development,  with  such 
a  faithful  relation  of  the  antecedents  which  produced  them,  that 
later  Argentine  historians*  have  recurred  to  these  fountains  as 
to  a  daguerreotype  of  their  juvenile  condition,  in  order  to  verify 
the  historic  facts  comprised  in  that  epoch. 

The  public  of  the  United  States  knew  at  that  time,  through 

*  Historia  Argentina,  by  Domtnguer. 


20 

this  voyage  of  their  commissioners,  the  geographical  and  chron- 
ological contemporaneous  history  of  those  countries,  watered  by 
the  Rio  de  la  Plata,  and  was  then  interested  in  their  indepen- 
dence, which  was  sunn  recognized  by  the  United  States.  Since 
that  act  and  the  book  of  Breckinridge,  no  work  has  been  pub- 
li-hed  in  the  United  States,  of  such  intelligent  and  appreciative 
sympathy  with  the  republics  of  South  America,  whose  inde- 
pendence  was  secured  by  Generals  and  battles  which  yield,  in 
important  results,  to  nothing  which  history  relates. 

In  1826,  in  the  discussion  upon  the  Panama  mission  in  Con- 
gress, Webster  was  heard  to  utter  these  feeling  words  from  his 
lofty  seal  in  that  body,  against  the  indifference  which  already 
began  to  insinuate  itself  into  all  minds. 

"Sir,  what  is  mearil  by  this?  Is  it  intended  that  the  people  of  the 
United  Slate-  oughl  lobe  totally  indifferent  to  the  fortunes  of  these 
new  neighbors?  Is  no  change  in  the  light  in  which  we  are  to  view 
them  to  he  wrought  by  their  having  thrown  off  foreign  dominion,  estab- 
lished independi  nee,  and  instituted  on  our  very  borders  republican 
rrovernments  essentially  after  our  own  example?  Sir,  I  do  not  wish  to 
overrate,!  do  not  overrate  the  progress  of  these  new  states  in  the 
great  work  of  establishing  a  well  secured  popular  liberty.  I  know  that 
in  be  a  great  attainment,  and  I  know  they  arc  lait  pupils  in  the  school. 
But,  thank  God,  they  are  in  the  school.  They  aie  called  to  meet  diffi- 
culties  such  as  neither  we  nor  our  lathers  encountered.  For  these  we 
oughl  to  make  large  allowances.  What  have  we  ever  known  like  the 
colonial  vassalage  of  these  States?  When  did  we  or  our  ancestors 
feel,  like  them,  the  weight  of  a  political  despotism  that  presses  man  to 
the  earth,  or  that  religious  intolerance  which  would  shut  up  heaven  to 
all  of  a  different  creed?  Sir,  we  sprung  from  another  stock.  We  belong 
to  another  race.  We  have  known  nothing,  we  have  felt  nothing  of 
the  political  despotism  of  Spain,  nor  of  the  heat  of  her  fires  of  intole- 
rance. No  rational  man  expects  that  the  South  can  run  the  same 
rapid  careei  as  the  North,  or  that  an  insurgent  province  of  Spain  is  in 
the  same  condition  as  the  English  colonies  when  they  first  asserted 
their  independence.  There  is,  doubtless,  much  more  to  be  done  in  the 
first  than  in  the  last  case.  But  on  that  account  the  honor  of  the  attempt 
i-  not  less,  and  if  all  difficulties  shall  be  in  time  surmounted,  it  will  be 
greater.  The  work  may  be  more  arduous;  it  is  not  less  noble,  because 
there  may  be  more  of  ignorance  to  enlighten,  more  of  bigotry  to  sub- 


21 

due,  more  of  prejudice  to  eradicate.  If  it  be  a  weakness  to  feel  a 
strong  interest  in  the  success  of  these  great  revolutions,  I  confess  myself 
guilty  of  that  weakness.  If  it  be  weak  to  feel  that  I  am  an  American, 
to  think  that  recent  events  have  not  only  opened  new  modes  of  inter- 
course, but  have  created  also  new  grounds  of  regard  and  sympathy 
between  ourselves  and  our  neighbors ;  if  it  be  weak  to  feel  that  the 
South,  in  her  present  state,  is  somewhat  more  emphatically  a  part  of 
America  than  when  she  lay  obscure,  oppressed  and  unknown,  under 
the  grinding  bondage  of  a  foreign  power  ;  il  it  be  weak  to  rejoice  when, 
even  in. any  corner  of  the  earth  human  beings  are  able  to  rise  from 
beneath  oppression,  to  erect  themselves,  and  to  enjoy  the  proper  happi- 
ness of  their  intelligent  nature, — if  this  be  weak,  it  is  a  weakness  from 
which  I  claim  no  exemption." 

The  history  of  the  United  States  shows  that  Webster  was 
the  last  statesman  who  felt  that  weakness. 

Who  has  read  an  American  book?  asked  the  English  histo- 
rian. Washington  Irving  replies  by  writing  the  Life  and 
Voyages  of  Christopher  Columbus,  and  England  and  the  world 
read  a  book  of  North  American  birth  but  of  South  American 
and  Spanish  descent. 

Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  monarchs  of  Aragon  and  Castile, 
Columbus  and  the  discovery  of  Hispaniola  are  the  first  page 
of  the  history  of  North  America,  and  every  time  the  North 
American  mind  has  to  recur  to  its  origin,  it  must  return  to 
the  Spain  of  Charles  V.  and  Philip  II.;  and  there  meet  the  histo- 
rian of  another  language,  of  another  nation,  and  of  other  colo- 
nies. Washington  Irving,  in  following  Columbus,  pointed  the 
way  to  Spanish  and  South  American  chroniclers  and  historians, 
and  to  the  dusty  documents  hoarded  in  the  archives  of  Simancas, 
for  the  guidance  of  the  whole  school  of  North  American  Spanish 
historians  who  followed  in  his  footsteps.  Prescott  first  penetra- 
ted the  Spanish  conquests  in  Mexico  and  Peru,  in  the  reigns  of 
the  Catholic  monarchs  and  of  Philip  II.,  in  order  better  to 
explain  the  historic  meaning  of  the  events  he  narrates  ;  as 
Le  Verriei*  remade  and  rectified  all  existing  astronomical  cal- 
culations, before  commencing  the  search  for  his  planet. 

Prescott  is  a  South  American  historian,  and  in  the  history 
of  the  colonies  shows  himself  fully  at  home.     Prescott  is  also 


22 

a  Spanish  historian  by  his  profound  erudition,  and  by  that 
moral  indifference  which  Webster  saw  in  the  future,  and  im- 
pugned in  reference  to  the  consequences  of  the  errors  and  per- 
versities of  Spanish  colonization  in  South  America,  It  is  the 
rule  of  the  plastic  art  of  historical  composition,  that  the  historian 
shall  show  himself  to  be  impartial,  and  shall  transport  himself 
in  imagination  again  to  live  over  the  life,  the  pre-occupations, 
and  the  ideas  of  the  times  which  he  describes.  But  there  is 
great  danger  of  touching  the  extreme,  of  losing, 'by  too  great 
an  effort  for  impartiality,  all  consciousness  of  good  and  evil, 
making  himself  an  accomplice  of  the  vices  of  his  heroes.  I 
have  wished  to  discover  in  what  country  and  in  what  age  the 
works  of  Prescott  upon  Spanish  colonization  in  South  America 
were  written,  and  sometimes  it  has  seemed  to  mc  that  it  must 
have  been  in  Spain,  in  the  midst  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Quite  another  thing  is  Motley  in  his  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Re- 
public, another  arm  of  Spanish  domination  which  went  to  the 
pools  of  Holland  to  stifle  in  its  cradle — the  native  country  of 
the  degenerate  Philip  II. — the  germs  of  modern  liberty.  Motley 
i-  North  American  in  body  and  soul.  An  impartial  historian, 
he  exercises  the  historical  power  of  doing  justice,  calling  to  his 
tribunal  the  illustrious  criminals  who  have  no  other  judge  on 
earth  but  the  historian,  who,  after  having  listened  to  the  wit- 
nesses and  exhumed  the  corpses  to  verify  the  wounds,  or  the 
presence  of  poison,  delivers  them  up,  with  his  sentence,  to  the 
execration  of  future  ages.  Motley,  without  failing  in  his  im- 
partiality, fought  by  the  side  of  William  the  silent,  interpreted 
hi-  taciturnity,  and  executed  his  orders.  The  history  of  the 
wars  of  Flanders,  is  the  beginning  of  North  American  history, 
for  there  those  principles  of  government  were  tried  which  have 
been  developed  in  the  United  States.  It  is  also  the  beginning 
of  the  history  of  South  America,  because  the  Spanish  captains 
who  from  there  passed  to  South  America,  learned  to  harden 
themselves  to  crime  and  to  the  violation  of  divine  laws,  in  the 
name  of  a  (rod  served  by  pillage  and  extermination.  Motley's 
history  has  not  yet  been  translated  into  Castilian,  because  the 
malefactors  in  it  have  kindred  and  friends  who  feel  themselves 


23 

to  be  ensanbenitadas*  in  that  auto  dafe  celebrated  in  expiation 
for  the  ills  done  to  human  liberty  and  conscience.  Would  that 
the  courageous  and  generous  Motley  may  go  to  South  America, 
to  scourge  with  his  historical  lash,  all  that  remains  of  the  work 
of  Philip  II.  which  Prescott  left  in  unmolested  and  tranquil 
possession  of  the  soil. 

North  American  historic  art  having  referred  to  the  original 
sources  of  the  history  of  South  America,  it  was  necessary  to 
penetrate  farther  into  Spanish  literature  and  fine  arts,  and 
Ticknor,  of  Boston,  wrote  a  complete  History  of  Sp anish  Lite- 
rature, by  the  aid  of  five  thousand  volumes  written  in  that 
language,  as  the  English  studied  the  Sanscrit,  forgotten  by 
India,  in  the  Vedas  and  Paranas.  Strange  to  say,  the  printing- 
offices  of  the  Spanish  language  are  in  Paris,  Brussels  and  New 
York.  The  best  speaker  of  the  Castilian  language, — Andres 
Bel  o,  a  Venetian  resident  in  Chili, — has  never  been  in  Spain, 
yet  he  has  been  made  a  member  of  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Madrid,  which  like  the  Tribunal  of  Kites,  in  China,  has  the 
function,  in  the  name  of  an  inert  and  congealed  civilization,  of 
rejecting  all  those  words,  which,  with  the  objects  and  the  ideas 
of  modern  progress,  ask  to  be  nationalized.  In  New-England, 
Mr.  Ticknor,  the  most  learned  living  litterateur  of  the  Spanish 
language, — which  is  treated  by  foreigners  as  a  classic  but  dead 
language, — cannot  speak  it  any  more  than  he  can  speak  Greek 
or  Latin. 

Spain  is  a  subject  worthy  of  study  in  its  artistic  manifesta- 
tions, which,  notwithstanding  some  collateral  influences,  are 
its  own,  without  the  inheritance  of  ancient  art  which  was  not 
revived  for  it  as  for  the  rest  of  Europe,  with  the  fall  of  Constan- 
tinople. To  this  day,  in  the  Peninsula,  and  in  Spanish  Amer- 
ica, Sophocles  and  Homer  are  not  used  for  Greek  readings  in 
their  universities.  Velasquez,  Murillo,  Surbaran,  are  not, — 
like  Michael  Angelo  and  Raphael, — disciples  of  Phidias  and 
Praxiteles.  The  model  of  Velasquez  is  the  shepherd  of  old 
Castilla,   elevated   to    the    rank    of  Patriarch ;    the  virgin    of 


*  The  Sanbenito  is  a  gown  marked  with  a  yellow  cross  behind  and  before, 
and  worn  by  penitent  convicts  of  the  Inquisition. 


24 

Murillo  is  the  Andalusian  of  undulating  outlines  as  the  curvi- 
linear beauty  of  the  human  ideal  requires.  Calderon  de  la 
Barca  invented  a  dramatic  art  from  top  to  toe,  and  carried  it  to 
greater  perfection  than  that  mysterious  people  did  their  statu- 
ary, who  have  left  their  monuments  in  Nicaragua.  His  merit 
does  DOt  puss  beyond  these,  however;  although  it  is  so  great 
that  humanity  owes  him  an  accessit.  It  is  a  prodigy  to  create 
an  art  without  the  aid  of  human  tradition,  but  such  attempts 
cannot  serve  for  models,  and  after  being  admired,  they  pass  into 
museums  of  curiosities. 

In  Spanish  literature,  Mr.  Ticknor  must  have  stumbled  upon 
that  great  aerolite  which  fell  from  heaven  upon  the  soil  of  la 
Mancha,  (Don  Quixote)  and  have  halted  to  contemplate  it 
with  the  same  admiration  and  stupor  as  all  the  literati  of  the 
world  have  done.  Human  genius  is  independent  of  the  influ- 
ences  of  race  and  atmosphere.  Cervantes  found  the  foreign 
legend  of  Amadis  de  Gaul  and  the  profession  of  knight  errantry 
motcd  in  Spain,  and  undertook  by  strokes  of  genius  to  expel 
the  worthless  idlers  who  were  perverting  the  common  sense  of 
tin'  nation.  But  that  evil  weed  of  the  middle  ages  being;  extir- 
pated,  nothing  grew  in  its  place,  the  inquisition  taking  good 
care  to  root  out  every  new  plant  germinated  by  the  winds 
which  agitated  modern  Europe. 

Cervantes  knew  little  of  the  history  of  Spain,  and  what 
Ticknor  points  out  as  his  carelessness  proves  it  in  numerous 
and  essential  particulars.  For  this  reason  he  belongs  to  no 
nation.  He  is  the  exalted  glorification  of  the  human  race  and 
all  nations  claim  him.  By  his  stepping  upon  the  earth  he  cre- 
ated a  language  :  for  the  angels  of  heaven  perfect  all  that  they 
t  >uch.  This  idiom  has  been  called  the  idiom  of  Cervantes, 
and  it  has  been  embalmed  in  honor  of  him. 

From  the  time  that  their  country  ceased  to  be  English,  in 
order  to  he  AMERICA  in  the  history  and  progress  of  the  human 
race,  another  current  of  their  own  history  was  to  carry  the 
North  Americans  to  South  America.  Beyond  the  frontiers 
and  the  present,  are  the  monuments  of  a  civilization  which  has 
had  its  dark  age  bul  not  its  renaissance.  America  has  her 
petrified  cities,  the  abode  of  a   great  people  who  flourished  in 


25 

them,  pyramids  which  rival  those  of  Egypt,  temples  and  pala- 
ces which  now  fertilize  the  trunks  of  trees  centuries  old.  The 
architecture  of  Satir  reveals  a  civilization  anterior  to  that  of 
Eo-ypt,  yet  a  branch  of  the  same  human  family,  as  is  manifested 
by  the  pyramidal  construction,  and  by  the  mummies  which  are 
found  in  Thebes  and  in  Peru,  with  the  same  canopo  or  idol, 
with  the  same  name  and  located  in  the  same  place.  When 
these  monuments,  which  begin  with  the  mound  arid  end  with 
enormous  masses  of  hewn  stone,  sculptured  with  a  thousand 
hieroglyphics,  have  been  studied,  classified  and  compared,  the 
history  of  both  Americas  will  begin  upon  the  same  page,  will 
be  illustrated  with  the  same  lights  from  the  time  of  their  origin 
to  that  of  Columbus.  Here  it  divides  into  two  great  chapters, 
Cabot  and  Pizarro,  who  terminate  in  Washington  and  San 
Martin,  and  then  their  peculiar  institutions  and  successive  de- 
velopments evolve  the  common  history  of  the  great  American 
family. 

For  a  long  time  there  has  been  no  hope  of  critical  history 
applied  to  the  raw  materials  collected  by  plastic  historians  and 
observing  travellers. 

"  A  new  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico,  in  which  Las 
Casas'  denunciations  of  the  popular  historians  of  that  war  arc 
fully  vindicated,  by  Robert  Anderson  Wilson,"  has  just  opened 
a  new  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  most  ancient  world.  This 
historian  shows,  by  a  critical  examination  of  the  ruins  of  thirty 
cities  in  Central  America,  that,  before  the  appearance  of  the 
Greeks  and  Romans,  India,  Phoenicia,  Egypt,  Yucatan  in  Cen- 
tral America,  Mexico  in  the  north,  and  Peru  in  the  south,  were 
leagued  together  by  navigation,  religion  and  the  arts  ;  for  the 
Peruvian  ruins  do  not  yield  in  importance  to  those  of  the  other 
countries  named,  nor  in  evident  indications  of  the  common  ori- 
gin of  the  Phoenicians,  Egyptians,  and  the  ancient  American 
civilizations.  "  The  labor  necessary,"  says  Wilson  in  his  work, 
"  for  the  production  of  this  chapter,  has  not  only  carried  con- 
viction to  the  mind  of  the  author,  but  has  brought  together  a 
mass  of  testimony  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt — testimony  suffi- 
cient to  prove  a  traditional  title  in  a  court  of  justice — an  Egyp- 
tian title  to  Central  American  civilization,  and  a  Phoenician  title 

4  " 


26 

to  the  religion  that  at  that  early  period  was  dominant  on  this 
continent,  under  the  influence  of  the  eastern  cdlonies,  while  it 
fully  explains  the  necessity  the  Romanists  were  under  of  invent- 
ing the  fabulous  mission  of  the  apostle  Thomas,  to  account  for 
the  religions  emblems  which  they  recognized  as  belonging  to 
their  own  superstitions.'" 

That  study  of  ancient  arts  and  monuments  has  begun  in 
North  America  :  but  following  the  traces  of  the  people  who  left 
them  in  their  migrations  to  the  south.  Stephens  found  them 
approximating  to  Greek  art  in  the  statues  of  Nicaragua,  and 
Norman  relates  the  same  as  discovered  in  the  pyramids,  palaces 
and  temples  of  Yucatan,  in  the  solemn  ruins  of  Chiheu,  Rabah, 
Tuzi,  and  Uxmal,  even  as  the  Spanish  explorers  had  found 
them  in  great  numbers  in  Palenque,  in  Cusco,  and  through 
all  Peru,  where  there  are  signal  marks  of  not  merely  one  but 
various  monumental  civilizations,  anterior  to  the  epoch  of  the 
Incas,  who  found  them  in  ruins.  While  these  labors  of  anti- 
quarians are  in  process  of  completion,  let  us  follow  the  steps  of 
other  explorers  who  are  examining  the  territory  of  the  future 
scene  of  human  movements. 

The  exploration  of  the  valley  of  the  Amazon,  made  under  the 
direction  of  the  Navy  Department,  by  Leivis  Herndon  ami 
Lardner  Gibbon,  published  by  the  House  of  Representatives 
of  the  Congress  of  the  United  States,  has  exposed  to  the  con- 
templation of  the  world,  that  most  wonderful  estuary  of  rivers, 
which,  like  the  veins  of  the  body,  give  life  to  the  whoie  South 
American  continent,  for  they  are  connected  with  the  bottom 
land.-  of  the  Orinoco,  and  may  without  a  great  effort  he  made 
to  communicate  with  the  Rio  de  la  Plata.  Perhaps  the  Ama- 
zon is  destined  to  be  the  means  of  restoring  the  countries  of  the 
torrid  zone  to  the  negro  rape,  to  whom  God  has  adjudicated  it, 
raising  up  punic  nations  along  the  course  of  that  powerful  river, 
by  the  freedom  of  Brazil  and  the  United  State-. 

L<i  Plata,  the  Argentine  Confederation,  and  Paraguay, 
being  a  narrative  of  the  exploration  of  the  tributaries  of  the 
rimer  La  Pluto  and  adjacent  countries,  under  the  orders  of  the 
United  Stated  Government,  by  Thomas  Paige,  U.  S.N.  Com- 
mandant  of  the  Expedition,   is  a  work  of  exploration  of  the 


27 

course  of  the  South  American  rivers,  next  in  size  to  the  Ama- 
zon, and  the  continuation  in  1865  of  the  mission  of  1817  in  the 
frigate  Congress,  by  the  Water  Witch. 

The  work  upon  Chili  published  by  Lieutenant  Gillis,  late 
superintendent  of  the  Washington  Observatory,  completes, — 
although  with  little  judgment  in  this  part, — the  North  Ameri- 
can study  of  the  principal  points  of  South  America — the  work 
of  Mr.  Squier  upon  the  ancient  monuments  of  Yucatan  and 
Peru,  being  still  anxiously  hoped  for.  To  these  may  be  added, 
as  a  scientific  complement  of  those  explorations  of  South 
America,  the  astronomical  observations  of  the  southern  skies, 
executed  by  the  same  Lieutenant  Gillis  whilst  in  Chili.  These 
have  not  yet  been  published,  but  will  be  so  under  the  patronage 
of  the  government  of  the  United  States.  The  scientific  expe- 
dition undertaken  by  the  learned  Agassiz,  and  paid  for  by  the 
citizens  of  Massachusetts,  for  the  purpose  of  studying  the  geol- 
ogy, botany  and  mineralogy  of  Brazil,  and  the  basin  of  the  La 
Plata,  is  destined  to  illustrate  with  new  data,  the  views  which 
are  entertained  upon  those  countries  ;  and  if  the  idea  of  the 
astronomer  Gould,  of  Cambridge  is  carried  out,  of  erecting  an 
observatory  in  Cordova,  to  complete  what  is  wanting  to  a  full 
catalogue  of  the  stars,  the  United  States  will  have  put  the  final 
touch  to  the  work  of  taking  an  inventory  of  that  creation,  of 
which  our  globe  forms  but  a  small  and  humble  fraction. 

A  more  influential  part  in  the  material  progress  of  South 
America  is  due  to  those  who  have  extended  to  it  the  benefits 
of  rapid  locomotion,  which  has  come  to  remedy  so  many  evils 
of  bad  Spanish  colonization.  Panama,  the  central  point  of 
Spain  in  her  occupation  and  conquest  of  the  coasts  of  the 
Pacific,  was  at  one  time  the  official  and  inevitable  route  of 
commerce,  until  contraband  trade  opened  a  new  route  to  Peru, 
by  the  Rio  de  la  Plata  and  Chili.  The  revolution  for  Indepen- 
dence set  free  Cape  Horn,  and  after  its  terrors  were  dissipated, 
Panama  fell  to  ruin  like  Palmyra  of  the  desert,  when  the  com- 
merce of  the  east  abandoned  the  route  of  the  Persian  Gulf. 

The  Xorth  American  Stephens  undertook  to  connect  the  two 
oceans  by  the  Panama  railroad, — a  dangerous  work  which  only 
the  American  go-a-head-ism  could  attempt,  calculating  before- 


28 

band, — like  the  general  who  wishes  to  take  possession  of  a 
strategic  position, — the  number  of  victims  he  would  have  to 
sacrifice  to  the  infernal  sods.  Panama  lias  again  become  the 
centre  of  the  commerce  of  both  seas,  and  will  be  so  of  the  east 
and  of  the  west,  with  the  archipelagoes  of  the  intermediary 
mie  world. 

Thus  the  history  of  the  Spanish  colonies  and  the  literature  of 
their  language,  the  monuments  and  vestiges  of  other  ages  which 
cover  their  soil;  the  exploration  of  the  great  rivers  and  their 
tributaries  :  the  geology  and  nature  of  the  lands  which  bathe 
them  :  the  modes  of  terrestrial  communication  to  accelerate 
motion,  and  the  constellations  of  the  southern  sky,  have  for  half 
a  century  excited  the  activity  of  the  North  Americans,  as  if 
those  items  were  an  integral  part  of  their  own  history,  geogra- 
phv  and  sky,  and  that  world  a  natural  prolongation  of  their 
own.  a  vast  field  for  their  activity  and  industry  ;  the  nature  of 
things,  rather  than  a  recognized  homogeneity,  drawing  them  on 
t<>  extend  their  action  over  those  countries,  and  to  advance 
human  knowledge  in  those  badly  explored  regions.  Are  there 
nol  in  this  movement  instinctive  laws  which  direct  and  impel 
them,  as  water  finds  its  level? 

The  actual  political  world  presents  many  of  the  features  of 
those  initial  epochs  in  which  spontaneous  societies  attempted 
systems  and  principles  of  government  according  as  historical 
or  geographical  accidents  determined  their  internal  develop- 
ment, combatting  among  themselves  for  external  dominion,  till 
weak  organizations  succumbing, — as  Darwin  supposes  in  the 
natural  -election  of  the  species, — a  current  was  set  in  motion, 
which  drew  into  it  other  tendencies  imposing  itself  for  c«nturies 
upon  humanity.  The  Egyptians  with  their  sacerdotal  castes  ; 
the  Persians  with  their  Dariuses;  the  Spartans  with  their  laws 
ofLycurgus;  the  Athenian-  with  their  fine  arts;  the  Phoenic- 
ians and  Carthaginians  with  their  commerce  and  colonies  ;  the 
Romans  with  their  legions  and  their  legislation,  each  one  for 
hi-  own.  comes  struggling  and  contending  to  establish  himself 
;t-  model  and  universal  ruler,  until  the  Greeks  eliminate  the 
Persians  and  Egyptians;  the  Romans  the  Greeks  and  Cartha- 
ginians :  and    Rome  :it    last    makes   herself  the  current  which 


29 

remoulds  the  East   and  the  West,  absorbing  them  into  her 
bosom. 

In  America,  the  United  States  have  succeeded  by  means  of  an 
internal  social  war,  in  taking  a  definitive  position  in  the  politi- 
cal world,  passing  from  an  attempt  at  institutions  to  an  initial 
civilization,  armed  at  all  points,  and  in  order  to  serve  as  a  rule 
and  model,  necessarily  prepared  for  one  of  those  general  con 
elusions  on  which  humanity  is  anxious  to  repose  after  each  one 
of  its  fractions  has  maintained  some  separate  truth. 

More  space  and  meditation  would  be  necessary  than  that 
which  an  introductory  address  admits,  in  order  to  determine, — 
the  necessities  of  the  epoch  being  given, — what  are  the  ele- 
ments which  constitute  North  American  civilization.  We  will 
indicate  those  which  enter  into  our  purpose — Intellectual  apti- 
tude generalized  for  the  whole  nation  and  for  all  Generations, 
by  a  plan  of  universal  education,  so  as  to  appropriate  to  itself 
every  new  progress  of  human  knowledge  in  all  countries. 
Preparation  of  the  soil  determined  by  railroads,  canals,  rivers 
and  seas  to  a  rapid  movement  and  circulation  ;  and  all  this 
conjunction  of  natural  and  acquired  advantages,  impelled  and 
governed  by  a  system  of  political  instruction  which  has  the 
sanction  of  time,  of  fruitful  and  happy  experience,  and  what  is 
more,  the  moral  sanction  of  the  human  conscience  in  all  coun- 
tries, supposing  that  the  right  to  civil  and  religious  liberty  of 
action  and  of  thought  is  indeed  an  unquestionable  truth  in  the 
conscience  of  men. 

As  may  be  seen  by  this  address,  none  of  the  actual  powers 
of  the  earth  holds  in  its  bosom  or  in  its  essence,  all, — although 
each  one  may  have  some, — of  these  elements  of  present  great- 
ness and  of  future  development. 

On  the  other  side,  only  England  and  the  United  States  have 
fundamental  institutions  to  offer  as  models  to  the  future  world. 
England  because  she  propagates  hers  with  her  commerce,  in- 
dustry and  language,  to  her  numerous  colonies,  not  exporting 
from  her  own  territory  her  monarchy  or  her  nobility  ;  the 
United  States  because  they  have  fertilized  and  diffused  them 
upon  their  own  territory  which  is  exempted  from  the  traditions 
of  the  past.     Aristocratic  England  may   be  proud  of  having 


30 

produced  the  democratic  United  States,  as  the  patrician  Cor- 
nelia was  proud  of  her  Gracchi  of  the  Tribune;  but  she  fails 
to  see  whether  the  modern  Gracchi  understand  better  how  to 
direct  the  popular  forces,  and  saving  themselves  for  themselves, 
save  the  world  from  one  of  those  retrogressions  which  follow 
tin.'  wanderings  of  the  initiators. 


IV. 

Imagine  an  immense  mass  detaching  itself  from  the  solar 
matter,  and,  obeying  Bode's  empiric  law,  taking  position  be- 
tween Mars  and  Jupiter,  in  the  hiatus  where  a  hundred  aste- 
roids are  now  wandering  !  What  confusion  in  the  orbits  of  the 
solar  world  !  What  oscillations  while  the  equilibrium  between 
the  old  and  the  new  attracting  forces  could  be  established  ! 
And  in  the  interior  of  the  planets,  what  unseen  commotions  ; 
what  violent  rising  of  the  seas,  causing  change  of  their  beds, 
deluges  and  disorder  !  How  long  before  the  new,  regular,  har- 
monious and  equally  balanced  order  could  triumph  over  the 
universal  confusion  ! 

Such  was  the  situation  of  South  America  at  the  beginning 
of  our  century.  The  United  States  detached  themselves,  at 
the  end  of  the  last  century,  from  the  mass  of  the  European 
world,  and  took  a  position  among  the  ancient  nations,  filling 
the  hiatus  which  separated  the  ancient  East  from  the  modern 
West.  The  commotion  was  soon  felt  throughout  the  whole 
earth.  South  America  felt  herself  irresistibly  impelled  to  be- 
come  independent  also:  she;  struggled  and  battled  from  one 
extremity  to  the  other,  severed  her  chains  and  won  her  inde- 
pendence.  "And  it  was  the  evening  and  the  morning  of  the 
first  dav."  On  the  following  day  she  had  still  another  task  ; 
to  organize  a  Government.  Should  they  be  Kepublics  ?  The 
French  Republic  of  L793   had  fallen.     Should  they  be  Mon- 


31 

archies  ?  One  of  the  kings  of  Spain  was  an  imbecile,  the  other 
was  a  captive.  Should  they  be  Empires  ?  The  great  emperor, 
as  a  warning,  was  bound  to  the  rock  of  St.  Helena.  The 
European  storm  having  cleared  away  in  1819,  and  the  chaos 
illuminated,  the  political  world  appeared  in  three  groups — 
Continental  Europe  under  the  Holy  Alliance ;  liberal  and 
monarchical  England  ;  the  Republican  and  Federal  United 
States.  Which  of  these  types  shall  South  America  take  as  a 
model  ? 

The  Liberator  Bolivar  extends  his  powerful  influence  over 
Venezuela,  New  Granada,  Ecuador,  and  the  newly  made  Boli- 
via. Bolivar,  according  to  one  of  his  eulogists,  imagined  an 
adaptation  of  the  English  government,  "  free  without  tumult- 
uous excesses,  strong  without  the  risks  of  despotism,  with  pop- 
ular legislation,  a  President  for  life,  and  between  these  extremes, 
a  hereditary  Senate. 

But  between  imagining  and  realizing  there  is  an  immensity ! 
What  have  not  the  French  imagined,  from  Sieves,  Robespierre, 
Fourier  and  Napoleon  the  Great !  Through  all  South  America, 
from  the  depths  of  society,  in  spite  of  the  judicious  algebraic 
combinations  of  statesmen,  there  arose  from  the  very  struggle, 
from  the  partial  emancipation  of  the  people,  the  dissolution  of 
the  former  Vice-Royalties,  with  the  name  of  federation  rather 
than  with  its  form,  the  intuition  rather  than  the  idea.  Such  a 
form  of  government,  said  Bolivar,  "is  a  "regular  anarchy,  or 
rather  the  law  that  prescribes  dissatisfaction  and  ruin  to  the 
state.  I  think  it  would  be  better  for  America  to  adopt  the 
Koran  rather  than  the  government  of  the  United  States,  not- 
withstanding it  is  the  best  in  the  world."  And  yet,  the  great 
centralization  which  he  labored  for  from  the  Orinoco  to  the 
Desaguadero,  became  dismembered,  while  the  Federal  Repub- 
lic, similar  to  the  United  States,  was  established,  or  is  still 
struggling  to  establish  itself. 

At  the  same  time,  the  Liberator  of  the  extreme  south  of 
America,  General  San  Martin,  whose  life  and  public  acts  1 
have  had  the  honor  to  offer  to  your  library,  said  :  "  I  feel  sick 
at  heart  whenever  1  hear  federation  spoken  of.  Can  it  be  real- 
ized ?"     And,  nevertheless,  he  lived  to  see  the  intuitive  federa- 


32 

tion  established  in  his  country,  in  spite  of  the  Congress  of  1818, 
which  accepted  monarchy;  in  spite  of  the  Congress  of  1826, 
which  constituted  the  Unitarian  Republic.  After  his  death, 
the  very  persons  who,  like  himself,  felt  sick  at  heart  when  they 
heard  the  word  federation,  constituted  the  United  Provinces 
of  the  River  Plata,  submitting  to  the  popular  vote,  and  Mexico 
has  struggled  for  twenty  years  to  be  called  the  United  States 
of  Mexico. 

Why  this  general  persistency  to  adopt  a  form  which  had  no 
precedent  in  their  history  ?  Because  the  only  existing  Republic, 
the  United  States  of  America,  presented  itself  in  this  form, 
powerful,  happy  and  free:  because  the  people  do  not  accept 
abstract  ideas  without  the  form  which  practical  facts  give  to 
them.  However  fit  or  unfit  those  countries  may  be  for  a  fed- 
nation,  however  well  or  ill  prepared  for  self  government,  they 
adopted  the  republican  form  of  government  for  the  same  reason 
that  they  struggled  for  their  independence  ;  and  it  is  the  Federal 
garb  which  clothes  the  model  Republic,  the  great  Republic,  the 
Republic  of  our  age. 

II;  iv.  then,  is  another  influence  of  the  United  States  on 
South  America;  an  unconscious,  latent,  permanent  influence, 
tlu'  cause  of  many  changes  and  revolutions.  One  half  of  the 
disturbances  of  Mexico,  of  Colombia,  and  of  the  Argentine 
Republic,  which  have  lasted  for  half  a  century,  demolishing  the 
colonial  svstem,  and  destroying  the  imitations  of  the  Roman 
and  the  French  central  Republics,  .have  been  caused  by  the 
indirect  but  powerful  influences  of  the  United  States. 

As  to  the  direct  influences  of  the  great  Republic,  a  single 
fact  will  serve  to  give  an  idea  of  them.  In  1848  a  traveller 
returned  from  the  United  States,  where  he  had  obtained  an 
insight  into  the  admirable  working  of  the  Federal  Constitution 
of  the  United  States,  and,  to  the  surprise  of  his  former  co-poli- 
tician-, he  initiated  a  movement  in  the  press,  which  spread 
th< nee  to  public  opinion,  to  parties,  to  wars  and  to  institutions. 
Hi  reasoning  was  simple:  "The  will  of  the  people,  violence 
and  th<'  course  of  events,  have;  given  to  the  State  the  federal 
}•„,.,„.  Constitutions  are  nothing  more  than  the  proclamation 
ofthe   rights  and  obligations  of  man    in  society.      In  this  view 


33 

all  the  constitutions  of  the  world  might  be  reduced  to  a  single 
one.  As  to  the  Federal  mechanism,  we  have  at  present  no 
model  except  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  We  are 
determined  to  be  Federals  ;  then  let  us  be  so  after  the  manner  of 
the  only  people  who  have  this  form  of  government !  Do  we  care 
to  invent  some  other  Federal  form  hitherto  unknown  in  the 
world  ?  Take  the  name  of  the  United   States  of 

South  America,  and  the  sense  of  human  dignity  and  a  noble 
emulation,  will  conspire  to  preserve  from  reproach  that  name 
with  which  great  ideas  are  associated."  In  1859,  after  ten 
years  of  fluctuations  in  events  and  ideas,  the  United  Provinces 
of  the  River  Plata  were  proclaimed,  and  Story  dethroned 
Rosas,  who  was  the  fruit  of  the  doctrine  of  free  and  uncon- 
trolled will  in  constitutional  matters  ;  as  were  also  the  works 
of  Rousseau,  Sieves,  Robespierre,  Napoleon,  and  the  disasters 
of  the  French  revolution,  which  decapitated  Louis  the  XVI. 
in  the  name  of  liberty  :  thus  reviving  the  times  of  Julius  Caesar, 
or,  in  other  words,  going  back  two  thousand  years  in  the  science 
of  government. 

The  liberty  of  conscience,  the  equality  of  religions,  the  gene- 
ral disarming  of  religious  creeds  which,  have  steeped  the  earth 
in  blood,  from  the  Arians  down  to  the  thirty  years  war,  are 
North  American  principles.  The  world  owes  the  existence  of 
the  United  States  to  religious  persecution  ;  to  Roger  Williams, 
history  owes  the  treaty  of  alliance  between  the  persecutors  and 
the  persecuted,  and  the  human  race  its  present  enjoyment  of 
liberty  of  conscience.  Strauss,  Colenso  and  Renan,  unlike  Lu- 
ther, Calvin,  Torquemada,  and  Thomas  of  Canterbury,  can 
examine  the  bible  anew  without  plunging  the  nations  into  war, 
and  seeing  their  works  committed  to  the  flames,  as  in  the  times 
when  men  submitted  religious  truth  to  the  judgment  of  fire  and 
sword,  which  they  called  the  judgment  of  God. 

South  America,  peopled  by  religious  exterminators,  having 
the  law  and  fanaticism  in  the  laws  of  the  Indies  united  with  the 
State  Inquisition,  has  struggled  heroically  to  free  itself  from 
this  element  which  constitutes  part  of  its  very  essence,  and 
which  clings  tenaciously  to  a  dominant  church,  with  immense 
wealth,  with  an  exclusive,  pre-eminent,  influential,  all  powerful 


34 

clergy.     The  liberty  of  worship  has  been  the  point  of  conten- 
tion in  all  Spanish  America  ;  the  temporalities  of  the  clergy, 
the  target  of  the  struggle  of  parties.     The  ignorant  multitudes, 
superstitious,  indifferent  as  to  liberty,  to  well-being,  to  nation- 
ally.  wove  sensible,  only,  when  the  chord  of  the  dominant,  ex- 
clusive,   and   intolerant   religion  was  struck  ;  and   the  United 
States  is  now  witnessing  the   lot   which   fell   to  Mexico  in  its 
efforts   to    sever    the    secular    chain.     Juarez   secularized  the 
properties  of  the  church  ;  and  the  bishops  delivered  the  country 
to  foreigners.     Maximilian,   in  the   name  of  great  principles, 
jnstilied  Juarez,  and  took  possession  of  the  Republic.     Is  there 
so  much  cause  to  blame  the  many  struggles  of  South  America? 
Is  the  soldier  who  comes  out  of  the  battle  covered  with  wounds 
less  glorious  than   he  who  comes  out  of  the  struggle   safe  and 
sound?  North   America    reaped  the   fruit  of  the   blood  which 
their  fathers  had  shed    in    England,  when  the   Pilgrims,  Lord 
Baltimore,  Penn  and  Roger  Williams,  came  to  its  shores.     It 
is  but  forty  years  since,  in  Lima,  the  people  scattered  the  fire- 
brands of  the  Inquisition,    and   destroyed  the  instruments  of 
torture.      South    America  is  still  passing  through  her  thirty 
veins  war,  to  enter  into  the  conditions  of  the  modern  political 
world  ; — bleeding,  in  order  that  English  and  American  protes  • 
tants  and  dissenters  may  have  the  right,  there,  as  here,  to  wor- 
ship God  according  to  the  faith  of  their  lathers. 

The  first  constitution  of  the  Provinces  of  the  River  Plata, 
said,  in  1815:  "the  Roman  Catholic  Apostolic  religion,  is 
the  religion  of  the  State."  The  second,  of  1819,  added  :"  to 
which  the  inhabitants  shall  pay  the  greatest  respect,  whatever 
their  opinion  may  be." 

That  of  Buenos  Ayres,  promulgated  in  1834,  with  a  State 
religion,  said  :  "  nevertheless,  the  right  which  man  has  to  wor- 
shij,  God  according  to  his  conscience,  is  inviolable."  The  last 
one,  of  1852,  suppressing  the  religion  of  the  State,  says  :  "  the 
FEDERAL  GOVERNMENT  sustains  the  Catholic  worship.'"  It 
has  taken  forty  years  to  modify  the  colonial  exclusiveness  to 
the  suppression  of  the  State  church;  but  each  of  these  amend- 
ments ha-  cost  much  disturbance,  and  many  battles.  Perhaps 
man\  others  may  be  required  before  we  can  arrive  at  true 
\.H  ill    \ merican  principles. 


35 

Four  years  of  war,  the  loss  of  a  million  of  men,  and  three 
thousand  millions  of  debt,  it  has  cost  the  United  States  to  be 
the  last  on  earth  which  has  abolished  slavery.  Their  own 
experience  has  taught  them  to  be  indulgent  with  those  auda- 
cious and  determined  South  American  patriots,  who,  since 
1810,  undertook  at  the  same  time  to  be  independent,  give  liberty 
to  their  slaves  as  they  wished  it  for  themselves,  and  give  them- 
selves a  form  of  government  which,  unlike  that  of  the  United 
States,  had  no  precedent  in  the  colonies  ; — without  being  like 
France,  twice  discouraged,  nor  abandoning  its  fate  to  the  tute- 
lage of  one  man ;  as  neither  the  influential  Bolivar,  nor  the 
sanguinary  exterminator  Rosas,  could  succeed  in  vanquishing 
the  indomitable  purpose  of  South  America,  to  learn  to  be  free 
at  its  own  cost,  risk  and  peril ;  for  one  generation  after  another 
offered  its  blood  to  irrigate  each  new  principle  introduced  into 
the  country.  So  it  was  that  when  they  had  gained  one  point 
and  had  established  it,  they  left  it  to  the  care  of  the  women, — 
and  by  penance  and  fastings  prepared  themselves  to  conquer 
another;  and  a  new  civil  war  commenced,  and  after  the  battle, 
the  Magna  Charta  is  signed  :  after  another,  the  bill  of  rights  ; 
after  another,  the  liberty  of  worship  for  foreigners  ;  because 
we,  the  Catholics,  have  it.  Holy  Pilgrim  Fathers  of  South 
America,  justice  will  yet  be  done  to  you  by  the  sons  of  the 
Plymouth  Pilgrim  Fathers  of  Rhode-Island  and  of  Massachu- 
setts Bay  ! 

I  will  not  attempt  to  conceal  the  fact  that  the  ignorance  of 
three  centuries,  the  ignorance  of  the  Spaniards  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  perpetuated  in  a  savage  land,  the  abject  condition  of 
the  rude  Indian  incorporated  into  colonial  society,  fanaticism 
and  the  loosening  of  every  moral  bond,  have  produced  in  South 
America  greater  depravity  than  slavery  in  the  south,  here. 
There  is  no  company  of  apostles  without  a  Judas,  without  a 
Peter,  who  denies  his  master  thrice.  You  have  seen  by  the 
impartial  historian,  Macauley,  how  it  was  in  the  most  corrupt 
times  and  by  the  most  depraved  men  of  England,  that  English 
liberty  was  definitely  constituted. 

What  we  ask  for  South  America  is  not  indulgence,  but  jus- 
tice.    We  ask  merely  for  the  time  needed  for  each  cause  to 


36 

produce  its  effect.  Let  us  compare  South  America  with  your 
country.  The  United  Slates  occupied  ten  years  in  the  war  of 
Independence,  and  tour  years  in  the  war  against  slavery.     We 

2jht  tor  both  causes  at  the  same  time,  and  won  them  both 
in  fifteen  wars.  So  far  we  are  equals.  But  you  have  not  had 
to  wage  war  to  establish  liberty  of  conscience,  that  having 
already  been  done  for  you  by  England  at  a  time  of  persecution, 
banishment  and  bloodshed.      You  arc,  in  fact,  the  result  of  that 

•h — ot'  that  struggle.  Give  us  but  twenty  years  to  extin- 
ii  the  fires  of  the  Inquisition,  which  are  continually  breaking 
out  in  different  parts,  'throughout  the  vast  extent  of  Spanish 
America.  You  have  not  been  exposed  to  the  dangerous  influ- 
ence.- of  France  from  1810  to  18 —  and  1  know  not  what,  dis- 
turbing you  with  pernicious  writings  and  evil  examples,  hold- 
ing up  alternately,  as  the  maximum  bunum  of  governments,  first 
the  Republic,  then  the  Empire,  next  the  restored  monarchy, 
awain  the  popular  monarchy — then  throwing  down  monarchy 
and  restoring  the  Republic — crushing  the  Republic  and  estab- 
lishing the  Empire.  .  .  .  You  have  not  had,  as  we  have, 
a  more   fortunate   republic,  such   as   the  United   States,    as  a 

Jibor,  tantalizing  you  by  holding  up  as  examples,  its  liber- 
ties, its  wonderful  progress  and  its  federation.  How  many 
years  will  you  allow  us  to  experiment  with  these  several  models 
of  human  perfection?  Xot  even  twenty  !  Why,  twenty  years 
hardly  elapse  after  we  achieve  our  independence,  and  commence 
to  put  in  practice  the  theories  recommended  by  different  author- 
ities, some  good  and  some  spurious,  before  discord  reigns  again 
throughout  our  land  ;  Europe  intervenes  ;  war  is  again  kindled 
in  Mexico,  in  Chili,  in  St.  Domingo,  in  Peru;  the  (niarani 
Indians,  tutored  by  the  Jesuits,  enter  the  arena,  attempting  to 
put  over  us  a  savage  chief  whom  they  consider  of  Divine  ap- 
pointment, and  you  have  the  field  of  Agramante. 

But,  in  the  mean  time,  do  you  imagine  that  those  countries 
have  been  ruined  ?  Mistaken  notion  of  old  fashioned  common 
There  was  a  time  when  the  United  States,  which  now 
clothe  the  world  with  their  cotton,  sent  the  firsl  seven  bales  to 
England.  You  '.veil  remember  how  long  ago  thai  was.  Well, 
in    less  time,  the    Argentine   Republic  has   become   the  chief 


37 

market  for  hides  and  the  second  for  wool — Chili  holds  the 
highest  rank  for  copper  and  silver,  and  her  coal  supplies  the 
entire  Pacific  coast.  Without  the  saltpetre  of  Peru,  fewer 
cannon  shot  would  be  fired  in  Europe,  and  without  her  guano 
the  European  soil  would  be  less  fertile.  Quinine  is  exclusively 
the  production  of  Bolivia,  and  indigo  and  cochineal  form  the 
riches  of  Central  America  ;  Ecuador  and  Colombia  participa- 
ting in  a  greater  or  less  degree  in  each  of  these  productions  ; 
and  we  must  not  forget  to  mention  Coffee,  which  constitutes 
the  wealth  of  Brazil.  All  these  great  and  growing  indus- 
tries commenced  with  the  revolution,  and  have  since  been 
developed,  Spain  having  been  ignorant  of  the  capacity  of  Amer- 
ican soil.  There  is  not  among  them  a  single  State  which  is 
not  constructing  railroads,  or  has  not  had  them  in  operation 
for  some  time  past ;  and  while  the  press  here  has  but  recently 
announced  the  project  of  a  code  of  civil  laws  of  Xew-York,  we 
have  already  had  commercial,  civil  and  criminal  codes  in  force 
in  different  sections  of  South  America,  from  five  to  ten  years 
back.  I  think  we  shall  have  to  fight  once  more  to  establish 
the  system  of  public  schools.  We  will  fight,  and  it  will  be 
established.  Look  at  the  following  statement  of  a  newspaper, 
"  The  Standard,"  of  Buenos  Ayres,  published  in  your  own 
language. 

THE  PROGRESS  OF  FIVE  YEARS 1860 — 65. 

When  we  look  back  only  five  years,  and  compare  the  Buenos  Ayres 
of  1860  with  that  of  to  day,  we  find  a  wonderful  improvement,  and 
persons  who  have  returned  hither  after  that  short  interval  confess  the 
change  almost  similar  to  that  observed  among  British  Colonies.  It 
may  form  a  just  motive  for  pride  with  our  countrymen,  that  this  great 
progress  has  been  mainly  owing  to  English  enterprise  and  the  increased 
influx  of  capital  and  emigrants  from  the  British  Islands. 

In  1860,  there  were  but  15  miles  of  railway  in  the  River  Plate.  In 
1865,  we  have  over  200  miles  open  to  traffic,  as  many  more  actually  in 
construction,  besides  concessions  granted  for  500  miles  not  yet  begun. 

In  1860,  the  only  steam  communication  with  Europe  was  by  the 
Royal  Mail.  In  1865,  we  count  four  lines  of  steamers  plying  monthly 
with  Europe,  and  before  the  year  is  out  we  shall  probably  have  a 
steam-line  to  the  United  States,  and  two  more  to  the  Old  World. 


38 

In  I860,  Buenos  Ayres  could  hardly  boast  a  dozen  private  edifices 
worth  £10,000  or  over.     In  1865,  there  are  more  than  200. 

In  1860,  the  only  Bank  was  the  Casa  de  Moneda.  In  1865,  we  have 
three  in  the  city,  four  branches  in  the  country  districts  of  Buenos 
Ayres,  and  a  score  in  the  Provinces,  besides  several  in  formation  on 
both  sides  of  the  La  Plata 

In  1860,  the  Wool-exports  of  Buenos  Ayres  amounted  to  the  value 
of  £1,000,000.     In  1865,  our  clip  is  estimated  at  £2,500,000. 

In  1860,  the  Custom-house  of  Buenos  Ayres  yielded  a  revenue  of 
$3,000,000.     In  1865,  it  gives  nearly  six  millions  hard  dollars.  * 

In  1860,  the  number  of  emigrants  arrived  was  6000.  In  18  35,  it 
exceeds  12,000. 

In  1860,  the  price  of  good  land  in  this  Province  averaged  £3000  per 
square  league.     In  1865,  it  is  about  £6000. 

In  1860,  the  city  had  but  two  markets  and  two  theatres.  In  1865, 
we  have  six  markets  and  four  theatres. 

In  1860,  the  newspaper  circulation  of  Buenos  Ayres  amounted  to 
2000  copies  (of  which  300  English.;  In  1865,  it  exceeds  10,000  (of 
which  1700  English.) 

In  1860,  Fire  and  Life  Insurance  was  a  thing  unknown.  In  1865, 
we  have  a  dozen  English   Insurance  agencies,  and  every  second  house 

is  insured. 

In  1800,  there  was  not  one  British  enterprise  or  joint-stock  company 

in  the  River  Plate.    In  1865,  we  have  the  following: 

London  and  River  Plate  Bank     -              -              -  £2,000,000 

Great  Southern  Railway       -  750,000 

Northern  Railway             -  160,000 

Central  Argentine  Railway  -  1,000.000 

Boca  and  Ensenada  Railway       -                            -  150,000 

San  Juan  Mining  Co.              -  100,000 

Beside  several  projects,  many  of  undoubted  realization  : 

London,  Brazilian  and  Maua  Bank  -  -     £5,000.000 

Eastern  Argentine  Railway     -  -  -  1,000,000 

Dolores  extension  [G.  Southern]     -  -  -  600,000 

Cordoba  Land, Company  -  -  -  1,000,000 

Morgan  Beef  Lacking  Company     -  -  -  150,000 

River  Plate  Steamboat  Company         -  150,000 

And   many  others   which  do   not   at  present  occur   to   us.     Here  we 

have  an  aggregate  of  £12,000,000  of  British  capital,  without  taking 

accounl  of  the  immense  fortunes  belonging  to   British   residents,  all  of 


39 

which  is  being  actively  employed  for  the  industry  and  progress  of  the 
country.  We  doubt  if  there  be  any  other  part  of  the  globe,  not  a  Brit- 
ish colony,  in  which  so  much  English  capital  has  been  invested,  and 
without  any  vain  glory  we  may  lawfully  say  that  the  advancement  of 
Buenos  Ayres  dates  from  the  same  epoch — 1860 — as  when  British 
public  enterprise  first  appeared  in  the  River  Plate. 

But  I  invite  you  to  cast  a  glance  upon  the  actual  situation  of* 
South  America,  over  which  the  conflagration  of  war  has  spread 
almost  from  one  extremity  to  the  other,  and  you  will  see  that 
she  is  not  to  blame  for  one  half  of  her  misfortunes.     What  do 
you  see  in  fact  ?  The  island  of  St.  Domingo  occupied  by  Spain, 
who  imagined  that  the  people  were  clamoring  to  resume  the 
broken  chain  of  colonization  ;  and  after  three  years  of  war  with 
that  people,  we  see  Spain  herself  confessing  that  she  had  been 
mistaken.     Do  not  the  pious  hear  the  bells  say  just  what  they 
wish  to  hear  ?  In  the  "  Revue  des  deux  Mondes"  of  1861,  it 
is  explained  how  Spain  caused  herself  to  be  called  there  by  the 
treaty  of  1856,  and  how  quickly  she  answered  to  her  own  call. 
Mexico,   also,  clamored   for   an  Emperor,   to   insure  to  the 
church  its  own  property.    This  is  the  official  truth,  the  probable 
truth,  the  truth  but  not  the  whole  truth,  as  Lincoln  said.    The 
whole  truth,  is,  that  for  some  time  back  the  era  of  the  Caesars 
has  been  revived  in  Europe,  the  political  principles  which  are 
the  basis  of  the  United  States  government  have  been  opposed, 
•and,  in  their  stead,  the  method  employed  for  the  regulation    of 
nations  is  the  calculation  of  the  parabola  described  by  the  can- 
non ball.     What  fault  is  it   of  Mexico,  that  this  or  the  other 
political  theory  has  been  tried  in  Europe  where  so  many  have 
been  under  proof  without  success,  and  that  the  war  of  the  United 
States   gave   to  European  power  the  opportunity  of  bringing 
her  imperial  theories  to  their  very  doors,  as  a  stumbling  block 
to  their  advance.     Nevertheless,  Mexico  is  suffering  the  conse- 
quences.    But  yet,  Mexico,  so  undervalued,  so  incapable  of 
government,  so  demoralized  as  it  is  thought  to  be,  did   not 
succumb  in  Puebla,  as  Rome  did  at  Pharsalia  ;  and  tiring  out 
her  detractors,  and    would-be  subduers,  she  begins  to  interest 
the  world  by  her  courage,  her  constancy  in  misfortune,  and  her 
love   for  Republican  institutions.     If  Tallyrand  still  lived,  he 


40 

would  say  to  the  present  emperor  what  he  in  vain  said  to  the 
first :  "  Your  majesty  will  never  hear  the  last  shot  fired  in  a 
war  with  a  people  who  have  fought  eight  hundred  years  with 
the  Moors."  South  America  consummated  her  independence 
by  defeats,  until,  from  the  contusion,  came  forth  the  Grants  and 
the  Shermans,  the  Bolivars  ami  the  San  Martins,  who  end  in 
one  campaign  a  snuggle  of  four  years.  If  the  saying  of  Paul 
June-.  '•  I  have  just  begun  to  fight,"  when  his  vessel  was  sink- 
ing and  he  was  told  to  surrender,  is  North  American,  South 
is  a  colossal  Paid  Jones  who  makes  the  same  heroic 
speech  from  the  River  Plata  and  Conception  to  Central  Amer- 
ica and  Mexico.  Colonel  Pringles,  my  compatriot,  hemmed 
in  on  the  sea  coast  by  the  Spaniards,  plunged  into  the  sea  with 
his  detachment  of  cavalry,  and  continued  fighting  among  the 
waves  without  surrendering.  The  enemy  respected  that  hero- 
ism, and  not  only  allowed  him  to  pass,  but  escorted  him  to  his 
army. 

A  so-called  Spanish  diplomatic  agent  presents  himself  in 
Peru,  claiming  to  establish  a  treaty  of  independence,  and  with- 
out awaiting  a  reply,  a  Spanish  scientific  commission  declares 
the  o-uano  island-  of  Chinchas  annexed  to  the  Museum  of  Ma- 
drill.  America  is  indignant  at  the  recovery;  the  press  of  Chili 
laugh-  a  lii  lie  at  the  joke ;  the  queen  disapproves  the  recovery, 
and  nev<  rtheless  retains  the  islands.  The  Government  of  Peru 
wish.'-  to  overlook  tin  grievance,  but  the  people  rise  up,  and 
civil  war  breaks  out.  Spain  increases  her  squadrons, — not 
satisfied  with  the  three  millions  which  her  agent  had  demanded 
as  an  indemnity, — and  picks  a  quarrel  with  Chili  on  the  absurd 
pica  tint  -be  had  omitted  to  salute  her  flag!  It  would  scarcely 
be  more  ridiculous  for  any  one  of  us  to  confront  an  English 
Lord  in  his  own  country,  in  his  own  house,  and  exact  from  him 
a  well  bred  salute  under  pain  of  instant  chastisement  if  he 
does    ■        in  .v'latis    required  of  him.     And  although 

Spain  vi  with  regard    to    St.  Domingo,  and  disap- 

prove -I  the  ;.  t  of  her  agent-  in  Peru,  and  of  her  ministers  in 
Chili, — a-  hi-  majesty  the  emperor  may  have  been  mistaken  in 
Mexico;— >  11  liable  to  err, — America  is  none  the  less 

accused   of  disturbing  the  stream,  as  in  the  fable  of  the  wolf 


41 

and  the  lamb, — and  if,  in  her  innocence,  she  protests  that  she 
was  not  even  born  at  the  time  of  the  offence,  they  reply  that  it 
then  must  have  been  her  AMERICAN  COUSIN,  which,  for 
the  purpose,  amounts  to  the  same  thing. 

Another  American  war  is  raging  over  half  the  American 
continent, — the  war  of  Paraguay  with  Brazil,  the  Argentine 
Republic  and  Uruguay. 

Here,  in  Providence,  in  Mr.  Brown's  library,  you  will  find 
four  hundred  volumes  written  on  that  war,  commencing  by  a 
bull  of  Pope  Alexander  VI.  I  will  give  you  an  appendix  to 
those  books.  You  will  remember  that  in  Massachusetts  the 
Puritans  attempted  to  put  in  practice  the  laws  of  Moses.  In 
Paraguay,  the  Jesuits  attempted  to  prove  certain  theories  of 
government  deduced  from  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  and  the  tra- 
ditions of  the  primitive  times  of  the  church.  They  instituted 
a  paternal  theocratic  government,  with  all  the  peculiar  charac- 
teristics of  their  order :  abnegation  of  the  individual,  passive 
obedience  perinde  ac  cadaver,  community  of  property,  poverty 
of  the  individual  and  wealth  of  the  State.  They  made  their 
experiment  in  corpore  vili,  on  conquered  Indians  ;  and  were 
successful  so  long  as  there  was  a  Father  Jesuit  to  ring  the  bell 
for  the  people  to  go  to  their  work,  to  go  to  meals,  to  go  to 
prayers,  to  perform  drills,  to  extinguish  their  fires  at  bed-time, 
to  rejoice  when  the  bells  rang  merrily  or  be  saddened  when  they 
tolled  solemnly  for  the  dead.  So  successful  was  their  experi- 
ment, and  so  advantageous, — not  for  the  paternally  governed 
Indians  but  for  the  governing  Fathers, — that  the  Catholic  kings, 
whose  authority  the  Indians  of  the  Paraguayan  missions  did  not 
recognize,  save  through  the  missionaries,  made  a  general  onset 
upon  the  Jesuits  throughout  the  whole  extent  of  Spanish  Amer- 
ica, and,  in  one  night,  had  them  all  expelled.  After  this  exo- 
dus, the  consequences  of  the  paternal  government  were  evident. 
The  Fathers  had  been  taken  away  ;  hundreds  of  bee-hives  had 
been  bereft  of  their  queens  ;  confusion  reigned  over  the  whole 
land ;  the  human  bees,  educated  to  obey  another's  will,  dis- 
persed and  wandered  helplessly  for  the  want  of  the  regulating 
power  which  had  thought  for  them  and  given  them  life.  The 
revolution   came   next,   and   a   political  disciple  of  the  Jesuits 


42 

established  bis  government  upon  the  basis  of  the  passive  obe- 
dience of  the  human  bee,  and  thus  For  half  a  century  was  the 
Gruarani  State,  peacefully  governed.  He  was  succeeded  by 
the  first  one  who  happened  to  turn  up  when  the  tyrant  died, 
who,  in  his  turn,  appointed  by  testament  his  son  as  his  succes- 
sor, only  two  or  three  years  ago.  Here  Ave  see  a  Republic  (?) 
that  in  fifty-four  years  has  had  but  two  dictators.  Few  mon- 
archies in  the  world  can  point  to  such  long  reigns.  Since  the 
time  of  the  Jesuits,  the  government  carries  on,  for  its  own  ac- 
count, all  foreign  commerce  ;  it  sells  the  tobacco,  the  yerba 
mate,  the  timber  of  the  forests.  The  citizen  of  that  model 
republic  has  the  right  to  work,  and  that  of  selling  to  the  gov- 
ernment at  the  price  designated  by  it.  The  second  of  the 
Dictators,  putting  himself  in  contact  with  the  external  world, 
provided  himself,  in  England,  with  arms,  steamers,  machinists, 
engineers  and  captains,  and  one  day,  to  the  surprise  of  all 
Paraguay, — which  had  been  shut  up  within  itself  for  half  a 
centurv,  indifferent  to  the  Avar  of  independence  in  Avhich  it  took 
no  part, — his  son  invades  Mattogrosso  on  one  side,  and  Corri- 
entes  on  the  other,  without  giving  notice  to  Brazil  or  the 
Argentine  Republic  thus  assaulted,  until  after  the  attack  was 
made. 

This  war  is  noAv  raging  because  two  centuries  ago,  certain 
worthy  priests  imagined  they  had  invented  a  government  ad- 
equate to  the  condition  of  their  savage  neophytes,  and  ad 
niiijoreni  Del  gloriam.  But  whatever  the  result  of  that  war 
may  be. — and  what  it  will  be  is  hardly  doubtful, — Paraguay 
will  remain  open  to  commerce  and  the  civilized  world,  and  the 
rich  gifts  of  the  torrid  zone  will  descend,  by  our  majestic  rivers, 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Plata,  to  unite  with  those  brought  from 
temperate  climes;  and  perhaps,  we  may  even  realize  the  idea 
of  traversing  by  canals  the  land  which  divides  the  Araguai, — 
a  "branch  of  the  Plata, — Avith  the  Madeira,  a  branch  of  the 
Amazon,  which,  by  nature  is  connected  with  the  Orinoco  ; 
thus  presenting  to  astonished  mankind,  that  part  of  the  world 
which  has  been  held  last  in  reserve  for  the  development  of  its 
resource — the  world  of  the  Amazon — with  a  fluvial  navigation 
of  one  thousand  two  hundred  tributary  rivers  crossing  the  im- 


43 

mense  valley  of  the  Amazon,  which,  of  itself,  is  a  world,  and 
emptying  their  waters  in  the  Caribbean  Sea  at  the  North  ;  in 
the  River  Plata  at  the  South ;  and  in  the  Amazon  on  the  East. 

To  return  from  the  imagined  future  to  the  realities  of  the 
present.  Your  undertakings  in  the  River  Plata,  and  the  enter- 
prize  set  on  foot  by  you  in  Paraguay,  will  receive  a  new  impe 
tus,  and  the  cannon  which  now  thunder  in  the  solitudes  of 
Paraguay,  the  armies  which  penetrate  in  the  villages  and 
missions,  surrounded  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach  by  immense 
orange  groves,  may  be  the  precursors  of  American  industry, 
removing  the  obstructions  which  checked  the  passage  of  your 
river  steamers  to  the  centre  of  America,  where  the  cotton  plant 
grows  spontaneously  in  its  native  soil,  where  iron  ore  stains 
the  ground  with  its  red  oxide,  where  the  palm  and  date  trees 
waive  their  stately  branches,  while  gaily  colored  birds  feast 
unmolested  on  their  fruit. 

Having  shown  the  good  and  evil  influences  which  affect  us, 
I  will  close  this  long  exposition  by  pointing  out  one  North 
American  influence  which  is  still  wanting.  Man  does  not  live 
by  bread  alone  ;  and  we  have  New-England  to  prove  it  for  the 
honor  of  the  human  race,  and  in  compliance  with  the  precept, 
I  have  already  shown  you  how  the  spirit  of  Horace  Mann  col- 
onized South  America,  raising  excellent  schools  wherever  his 
doctrines  are  known.  This  moral  action  should  be  continued, 
spread  abroad,  strengthened.  Your  philanthropy  is  so  great 
that  even  after  shedding  its  influence  all  around  you,  applying 
balm  and  healing  to  every  wound,  you  have  still  enough  to 
spare.  The  Bible  Societies  annually  expend  a  million  and  a 
half  of  dollars,  to  take  the  light  of  Christianity  to  the  most 
remote  portions  of  the  globe.  But  South  America  does  not 
participate  in  these  gifts,  nor  would  she  yet  accept  them  in  that 
form.  She  needs  to  be  instructed,  not  in  the  written  word,  but 
in  the  practical  Christian  spirit.  You  have  founded  a  normal 
school,  in  Providence,  to  prepare  teachers  to  take  to  the  South 
and  bestow  the  bread  of  morality  on  the  freed  people,  by  culti- 
vating their  minds.  Governor  Andrew  has  already  sent  six 
hundred  teachers  to  Washington  Territory,  to  prepare  it  to 
assume  the  dignity  of  a  State.     This  is  the  crowning  form  for 


44 

propagating  the  principles  of  the  gospel,  together  with  freedom 
and  free  labor.  This  is  what  South  America  needs  and  would 
accept.  In  the  schools  which  I  have  visited,  French  is  taught 
in  some,  German  in  others,  Spanish  in  none.  Are  your  teach- 
er.- preparing  to  go  to  France  to  teach  the  principles  of  Ameri- 
can Liberty  ?  The  Spanish  language  is  the  key  of  South  Amer- 
ica. Your  great  historians  owe  to  it  their  fame  ;  your  naviga- 
tors, engineers  and  builders  require  it  whenever  they  travel  ; 
on  either  side  of  Cape  Horn,  from  California  to  Havana,  their 
vessels  touch  the  coast  or  penetrate  to  the  interior.  In  the 
olden  time,  when  nations  looked  hack  into  the  past  while  ad- 
vancing, the  Greeks  learned  the  Egyptian  language,  the 
Romans  learned  Greek,  the  barbarians  Latin.  They  feared  to 
<Xo  astray.  Now,  however,  that  the  nations  are  self-reliant  and 
progressive,  it  is  the  language  of  the  future  which  they  should 
learn,  and  English  is  the  language  of  the  oceanic  world,  as 
Spanish  is  the  language  destined  to  spread  itself  in  continuity 
with  the  English  throughout  the  vast  extent  of*  South  America. 
The  Castilian  language  lies  before  the  North  American  people 
like  a  conducting  wire,  and  should  be  the  language  taught  in 
the  schools  where  any  other  language  is  taught  besides  En- 
glish. Your  teachers  will  then  open  colleges  in  twenty  South 
American  States,  in  two  hundred  capitals  of  Provinces,  in  a 
thousand  towns  and  villages,  and  with  advantage  to  themselves, 
will  prepare  the  ground  for  the  plough,  the  cultivator,  the 
sowing  and  reaping  machines,  and  the  six  thousand  six  hun- 
dred patents  of  invention  granted  by  your  patent  office  this 
vcar.  which  are  not  now  used  among  us,  because  the  under- 
standing of  the  people  is  not  prepared  to  appreciate  them. 

This  is  the  only  conquest  really  worthy  of  a  free  people  ;  this 
is  the  "  Monroe  Doctrine"  in  practice;  this  the  initiatory  part 
opened  to  Rhode-Island  in  the  River  Plata  ;  this  my  title  to 
accept  a  place  in  the  Historical  Society,  which  has  honored 
me  by  making  me  one  of  its  members. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  775  126 


University  of  California  Library 
Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 

ONUNE  B|MEWALS 

wtP-,//eat§l6§.li3FiF^.U6ll:l^: 

My  Account 
APR1  4 


Univei 

Sou 

Li 


